BOISE, Idaho — This story originally ran in The Idaho Press.
It’s no secret that young people in the United States are struggling with feelings of hopelessness, but out of the entire country, Idaho youth are topping the charts.
A survey conducted in November 2022 in the Boise School District found that 30% of junior high students and 44% of high schoolers are depressed at a moderate to severe level — people are generally referred to treatment at the moderate level.
The same survey found that about 29% of junior high students and 34% of high schoolers have struggled with suicide ideation at least once in the last six months and 22% of junior high students and 29% of high schoolers said they would not ask for help from anyone.
These numbers line up with the findings in the 2021 national Youth Behavior Risk Surveillance Survey done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which showed the worst ratings for hopelessness, sadness, experiences of violence and experiences of suicidal ideation in young women since the history of monitoring it in the US.
“This is truly a national thing that we’re dealing with in Idaho,” Communities for Youth Director Megan Smith said. “We always show up in the top for suicidal ideation, depression and anxiety among our young people.”
According to the 2021 survey, 18% of girls in the U.S. experienced sexual violence, 57% experienced clinical depression and 30% reported to have seriously considered suicide within the last 12 months.
For doctors, researchers, parents and teachers alike, these statistics are sobering, St. Luke’s Research Scientist Dr. Anna Radin said.
The survey also shows sexual violence numbers in the U.S. are up 27% in the last two years, feelings of sadness and hopelessness are up 58% over the last 10 years and suicide ideation is up 60% over the last 10 years.
The numbers for Idaho are almost identical to the national data, Radin said.
The national numbers aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse. And according to Smith, the pandemic didn’t seem to significantly impact the numbers for depression in students.
The Icelandic model
The conversation surrounding the mental health crisis usually jumps to a lack of care. Smith has a different approach.
“We can’t resource our way out of this problem,” Smith said during a presentation to the Boise School Board. “We work with communities to support the efforts that actually meet the community’s needs.”
The Icelandic model insists on collaboration from the entire community — parents, teachers, coaches and young people — to solve problems. Smith describes it as an “upstream” approach, creating communities that are less likely to have mental health problems.
The stigma around seeking help prevents many in the state from seeking help, Smith said.
Stress and social isolation, according to the survey, are the leading factors for both depression and suicidal ideation in Boise students. That isolation is not pandemic related, Smith said. By her definition, social isolation is the feeling that one doesn’t have deep connections to people in their life.
The good news is, stress and isolation are not static. They can change.
“Social connection is key,” Smith said. “When we consider the environments that young people grow up in, we need to always be thinking about how we can maximize an open opportunity to connect.”
The difference between feeling socially isolated or not can be as simple as a teacher or parent recognizing a student’s talent or passion and providing them opportunities to connect with other students who share that or a parent encouraging their child to explore new sports or facets of art. Eliminating social isolation means connecting students with each other and connecting them back to themselves, Smith said.
“We need to build individual strength, but this idea of independence meaning not connecting to other people is a false narrative about what independence is,” Smith said. “Independence means we make our own decisions for ourselves. It doesn’t mean we stand alone.”
Many parents struggle to understand what their children are experiencing, which is why talking about depression and suicide ideation is exactly what we need to be doing, Senior Director of Community Health and Engagement and Licensed Master Social Worker Erin Pfaeffle said.
“Obviously it’s heartbreaking to normalize high rates of mental health issues that our children are suffering from, but we have to normalize them so parents can understand that this is not specific to a particular family or child,” Pfaeffle said. “The more that they recognize that other children and other parents are suffering as well, the more that we can have open conversations and learn from each other and build camaraderie and compassion.”
Research has shown that talking about suicide ideation and depression does not aggravate the problems; it does the opposite, Pfaeffle said.
Young people, Pfaeffle said, are more comfortable expressing mental health concerns than their parents are. Because topics like depression and suicide are heavy, some adults worry that they’ll say the wrong thing — so sometimes, they say nothing. Without that support, some young people will feel like they have to solve their problems alone, Pfaeffle said.
Even though Idahoans have a deep love for young people, there’s a disconnect between the perception of demonstrating love and actually feeling love, Pfaeffle said.
“In some communities, we see that kids don’t feel like they can have a real conversation with their parents,” Smith said. “Parents and community members and teachers are experiencing similar feelings of isolation ... only way through is for all of us to get together and keep talking about it.”
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
Watch more Local News:
See the latest news from around the Treasure Valley and the Gem State in our YouTube playlist:
Download the KTVB mobile app to get breaking news, weather and important stories at your fingertips.
