The “Create Resilience” Youth Art Contest for Suicide Prevention Announces Winners

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In honor of World Suicide Prevention Day and National Suicide Prevention Month, the Oregon-based nonprofit Hold On Campaign for Suicide Prevention held the “Create Resilience” Youth Art Contest for Suicide Prevention contest. Yesterday, they announced the contest winners.

The Hold on Campaign for Suicide Prevention uses the power of art to educate, connect, express, and heal; it is fiscally sponsored by From The Heart Productions. Its founder and director, Diane Kaufman, MD, is dedicated to transforming trauma and despair into life affirming creativity. Its services include community outreach, presentations on creativity and mental health; arts and healing workshops; visual art, song, and film creations for suicide prevention; and "Gifts of Hope" such as suicide prevention bracelets, pins, stickers, and artwork.

“The youth who took the time to answer the call of the contest to share their ideas—and do so creatively—on how to improve youth mental health are all heroes to me,” said Kaufman. “It's not easy to be open and vulnerable, to share about mental health, and especially about suicide.”

The top winners of the first annual “Create Resilience” contest are:

First place: "Look Both Ways,” a story by Sydney Chen, age 18, that “expresses an urgency felt by my seventh-grade self to be able to reach someone outside of her small, rural community who would at least try to have the capacity to understand and empathize with the depression that arose from a lack of understanding and acceptance of her Chinese heritage and cultural identity.”

Second place (tie): “Signal Lost, Signal Found,” an illustrated poem by Mahika Bhan, age 18, that “uses the metaphor of a radio to express what it feels like to live with mental health challenges: absorbing too much noise, feeling out of tune with the world, and falling into silence when it becomes too hard to speak.”

Second place (tie): “Hang in There!" a poem by Finley Waltz, age 15, which demonstrates that “Suicidal or not, having others care about you will help you in more ways than you know. I cannot count the amount of times my friends have saved my life without them even knowing it.”

Third place: “Comic Strip” by Lizzeth Martinez, age 20, is intended to convey “Feeling like you're completely alone is very overlooked as one of the root causes for depression, especially in young people. I've personally dealt with a lot of these hardships, but Superheroes were always a way for me to visualize ‘being different.”

You can view the winning submissions here.

“These youth responded because they know from their own lived experiences, be that their own or their friends, family, and society-at-large, how great a problem mental health and suicidal thoughts can be,” said Kaufman. “They want youth in distress to know they are not alone, that help is available, and that life is worth living. My goal is to make ‘Create Resilience’ an annual event, to attract donors in support of it, and to share it as a model project which can be scaled to all states across the USA.”

Kaufman is a poet, artist, humanism-in-medicine awardee, internationally award-winning lyricist, and retired child psychiatrist. She is a suicide attempt and suicide loss survivor with bipolar II disorder. In 2019, Kaufman received the Downstate Medical Center Alumni Association's Dr. Frank L. Babbott Award for distinguished service to both the medical profession and general community. In 2025, she received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the National Association for Poetry Therapy.

The “Create Resilience” contest was inspired by Kaufman’s essay, “If My Words Could Make a Difference,” which she wrote after learning about one of her young adult patient’s secret suicide attempt. The Oregon Council for Child & Adolescent Psychiatry awarded a grant to establish the "Create Resilience" Youth Art Contest. Blick Art Materials generously donated 4 gift certificates worth $25 in support of the contest.