POULSBO — In a school-aged world, struggling upstream through a maze of fickle friends, evolving trends, bullies, homework and activities while constantly chasing the next big thing, North End students say there is one thing that adults can offer that is more important than all else.

“They just want someone to be there for them,” said PJH parent and Know More Community Forum co-organizer Renee Arcement, summing up the myriad of student answers when asked — what, from the community and in schools, would you like to see happen more for you?

The statement also verbalized, in as many words, the underlying purpose of the Know More Community Forum Saturday at North Kitsap High School. Youth outreach professionals speaking at the event emphasized the need for open lines of communication between teens and adults on a variety of topics that are oftentimes swept under the proverbial rug.

The second annual forum hosted by the North Kitsap Community Connection, took a near 50 percent drop in attendance, but the information it delivered hit the 100 percent mark on a scale of relevance.

“It was half of what attended last year, but we know that the people who did attend benefited,” Arcement said. “The heart of it is that there is a place for everybody — to educate everyone so we can all be a better safety net.”

Among a host of topics ranging from “dating violence” to “how to keep my new driver safe,” the forum’s most popular sessions in with North End residents focused on bullying and dealing with teenage depression and anxiety — two issues that have been a source of tragedy in North Kitsap in recent years.

“It’s important to create a culture that respects differences between people,” community outreach educator Kaden Sullivan of Planned Parenthood of Western Washington said during the session he led on bullying. “It takes a lot of communication, and it takes a lot of being straightforward in that we have to accept people for who they are.”

There is an array of issues that can single out kids in school and prompt teasing or social rejection. Kids are products of the environments in which they grow up, he said.

The experiences that one has during the adolescent years will play a part in defining who that person is, Sullivan said, sharing a statistic from the Fight Crime: Invest in Kids organization which states that those who are bullied are five times more likely to be depressed and far more likely to be suicidal.

However, much of the time, depressed or suicidal youth aren’t even identified, said Sue Eastgard, director of Washington’s Youth Suicide Prevention Program — who led the session on dealing with adolescent stress and anxiety.

“We know that about one out of eight adolescents has clinical depression, and most of those kids are not diagnosed or treated,” she said, noting that many adults don’t know how to read the symptoms.

Being easily and overly sensitive to criticism, acting sad and withdrawn but also edgy, challenging authority, physical soreness complaints and consistent irritability are all signs of depression in youth that are sometimes overlooked, Eastgard said.

“I think parents are stressed out, I think the kids are stressed out,” Eastgard said. “What we need to do, as adults, is help our kids figure out how to manage that stress in healthy ways.”

“Having the forum is a huge step in the right direction,” Sullivan said of the quest to limit the dangers plaguing adolescent society today. “The first step is really just getting people to talk about it, to sit down and figure out strategies on how to combat that.”