LYNN — In 2012, Nan Cavanaugh ended her life at the age of 24. While it was devastating for her family, they channeled that pain into building The NAN Project.
“The NAN Project is about nine years old now. It started at the beginning of 2016, and it’s a program that I founded with my mother, Ellen, in response to the death by suicide of my sister,” Jake Cavanaugh said.
Cavanaugh said that while processing what had happened, his family wondered what they had missed. “How did we not know the pain that Nan was going through and the struggles she was experiencing,” he said.
He continued that Nan had struggled with mental health from a very young age, starting in elementary school.
“We always knew that Nan had something going on. We just didn’t really know what. For a long time, I think even after doctors came out and diagnosed her with having OCD, depression, and anxiety, I still felt like I never had a lot of education around mental health,” he said.
There was a realization that a lot of young people don’t have an understanding of what mental health is and what the challenges are.
“We wanted to do something to get young people better informed about mental health but really, ultimately, just taking down some of the stigma,” he said.
The NAN Project has traveled to schools all around Massachusetts, including Lynnfield, Chelsea, Danvers, Quincy, Brockton, and Stoneham. Now, they’re looking to connect more with the Lynn community, especially in the high schools.
“We’ve done most of the North Shore schools…but we haven’t done a ton in the Lynn high schools. That’s why we’re making a big push right now. We really want to get more involved in Classical, English and Lynn Tech,” he said.
Cavanaugh emphasized that Joel Abramson, who spends a lot of time working to improve the Lynn School District, was a major factor in connecting the NAN Project with Lynn schools.
When asked how the response has been, Cavanaugh noted that, in the beginning, there was hesitancy. It has since become much better.
“We were a new program,” he said. “The peer-to-peer model that we use isn’t something that there are a lot of examples of… that we could point to in other programs that are doing something like this. I think schools were a little nervous.”
He continued that, once they got involved with four or five different schools, the project started to spread really quickly.
“We can barely keep up with the demand. We end up turning away at least a dozen schools every year because we just don’t have the capacity by the end of the school year,” he said.
Cavanaugh continued that the desired connection from the schools has been great to see. He said it has also been great to see the benefits both the students and educators are getting from the project’s professional development.
“I had a kid come up to me yesterday [Monday],” he recalled. “We were over at Essex [Tech] in Danvers, and they came up and said ‘We need more of this. We need to get kids talking about mental health’.”
The project has seen positive feedback from students and the schools as they continue to advocate for mental health awareness.
“It’s rewarding,” Cavanaugh said. “It’s kind of my therapy, taking a terrible situation and all the grief that one would have and trying to pull some positive notes out of it to support a bunch of kids.”
He explained that the project had gotten in front of 12,000 students in 2024 and that they hope to do even more in 2025.
One of the events that the NAN Project is a part of is the Empowering Youth Voices Summit at the Danversport Yacht Club, which will take place on May 9, 2025.
“May is Mental Health Awareness Month. We always do this one of the first weeks of May. Last year, we had about 150 students from 20 different places, and around 30 or so chaperones and educators came along and did a bunch of workshops,” he said.
Cavanaugh continued that it was all about helping the youth and taking down some of the stigma.
As stated, the project runs through a peer-to-peer model, and Cavanaugh said, “We train young people to actually go into the classroom. We bring a team of three or four peer mentors, kids who are around the 18 to 25 range.”
Kids will go through training, talk about the struggles they went through and focus on the different supports that helped them during those difficult times, he explained.
“We train them to talk about those [struggles] from a place of strength,” he said. “Then they go into classrooms and share these stories for about five to six minutes to create a space where kids can ask questions, learn about different warning signs and learn about the different support systems.”
Cavanaugh said that it creates a space where students feel they can open up and engage in questions and discussions about mental health.
Currently, the NAN Project is looking to use Lynn Classical as a starting point in the high schools.
