Tackling Idaho’s Youth Mental Health Crisis
Idaho’s youth mental health stats are among the US’ most concerning.
Meet Megan Smith, PhD.
She’s decided to do something about the problem. On Friday, I attended her presentation at the NAMI Idaho conference in Boise. She imported the Icelandic Prevention Model (IPM) to Idaho to bolster community-based mental health protective factors among youth statewide.
Dr. Smith was a K-12 teacher for 6 years before uncovering her passion for public health. She became a founding member of Communities for Youth. Her work in Idaho has already led to a demonstrable decrease in depression symptoms among students in one of her partner communities. Her focus on data-driven programming is impressive. Below, you’ll see how she measured student stress as a function of the presence of a trusted adult.
She adopted the IPM because of demonstrated success over the last 2 decades in Iceland.
- Drop in rate of 10th graders being drunk in past 30 days from 42% to 20%.
- Drop in smoking rates from 23% to 5% and in cannabis experimentation rates from 17% to 7%.
- Increase in number of adolescents spending time with parents on weekdays from 23% to 42%.
- Jump in participation in organized sports from 24% to 42% among adolescents.
Dr. Smith is leveraging community resources and the IPM approach to pursue similar improvements in mental health outcomes among Idaho’s youth. I invite you to follow her work. I bet we’ll be hearing more about her prevention work in the future.
That’s good news for other states looking for effective strategies to tackle the expanding youth mental health crisis.
Photo Credit: Jack Bell Photography
