Digital duo takes home award for an innovative campaign to combat mental health issues in youth

The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that half of the nation’s adolescents have experienced a mental health disorder, such as depression, anxiety, or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at some point in their lives . Many young people receive treatment to prevent these and other problems from worsening and becoming chronic, but many do not, leading to problems that persist into adulthood and have serious consequences, both for individuals and for society.

The COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of other social and economic pressures have increased the incidence of mental health problems among adolescents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s time to talk about the problem and bring it out into the open, said Samantha Bertomen, a Master of Public Health candidate at the Department of Community and Behavioral Health at the Colorado School of Public Health.

“Young people are really suffering and their mental health problems are increasing,” Bertomen said. “We need to raise awareness and destigmatize mental health.”

A digital campaign to shed light on mental health issues in young people

Bertomen and Lisa Peters, who is pursuing a Master of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, recently collaborated on a project to illuminate the mental health issues facing young people, explain the importance of discussing and treating them, and give young people a platform to express their own experiences with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and other challenges.

The pair’s project recently competed with five other public health graduate schools and won the Student Health Edu-Thon 2022 Graduate Digital Competency held by him Society for Public Education (SOPHE). They took on the challenge of creating a digital intervention to address adolescent mental health with a campaign they called #MyMentalHealthMatters.

Bertomen said she and Peters initially discussed focusing on a single mental health issue and developing an app to address it, but decided a campaign with a “comprehensive approach” to mental health issues would have more staying power. Problems targeted after research include depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, substance use disorder, eating disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder Berthold said.

The campaign proposal relies on videos, podcasts, a website, social media and a school program to bring the mental health challenges facing young people out of the shadows and put them at the forefront of public health and policy discussions, Bertomen said. . She and Peters directed the campaign to Jefferson County, Colorado, with the idea that it could be implemented and adapted to the needs of other Colorado communities, as well as nationally.

A mental health intervention based on storytelling

The campaign takes an evidence-based approach to building the case for a digital intervention. Bertomen and Peters used data from the US Census Bureau and the National Alliance on Mental Illness to estimate the number of teens in Jefferson County at 113,000. Statistics indicate that about one in five will have a mental health problem, which means that about 22,000 teens in the county could benefit from education about their condition and services to treat it. In turn, preventive mental health services provided through #MyMentalHealthMatters could save Jefferson County nearly $48 million in subsequent health care and social service costs, Bertomen and Peters concluded.

Data collection and statistical analysis were a necessary foundation for the campaign, but Bertomen said she and Peters believe it’s vital that young people bring the numbers to life with stories drawn from their own experiences.

“We want to talk about mental health from a youth perspective,” Bertomen said. “A lot of times we have this idea of ​​public health people telling the community what we want them to do and what we think is necessary. In our campaign, we tried to use storytelling, where the youth would be front and center.”

Bertomen said the “main paradigm” the campaign uses to tell stories is a Public Health Reaching Across Sectors (PHRASES) Study that drew on insights from four citizen focus groups, interviews with public health professionals, and other sources. The study and the toolkit produced from it state that “storytelling is one of the most effective forms of communication and is particularly well suited to public health communications.”

For the #MyMentalHealthMatters campaign, Bertomen and Peters watch eight videos featuring young people from various demographics, genders, ethnicities, and sexual orientations talking about a particular mental health issue they face and how it affects them, the barriers they face in getting help, and the allies they trust to get ahead. Speakers will then present a “data-driven program-based approach to methods for thriving with mental illness,” Bertomen said, and discuss how the strategies helped them. A final “call to action” with suggested resources for help will encourage listeners to face their problems and seek help for themselves, she added.

The campaign focus also includes weekly podcasts, a website that serves as a portal to a variety of resources, search engine optimization tracking to connect with youth seeking mental health information, and the hashtag to encourage people to share stories and experiences, said Bertomen.

solve problems by listening

All of these approaches are based not only on listening to the voices of young people in the community, but also on actively seeking their input, he added.

“It’s hard to establish rapport and community engagement,” he said. “As public health professionals, that’s something we constantly talk about and it’s central to the process. If we want to achieve anything in this world as professionals, we really need to talk to the people who are actually experiencing these public health issues.”

It will take a lot of time, money and other resources to implement the #MyMentalHealthMatters campaign, Bertomen acknowledged. But she and Peters may get another chance this summer to present their ideas again in a webinar. At a minimum, the more the two of you talk about your ideas, the more you can encourage your peers to discuss the challenges of mental health issues as freely as you would a medical illness.

“It is very important to talk openly about mental health,” Bertomen concluded. “It’s easier to do that when the door is open.”

Story by Tyler Smith for the Colorado School of Public Health.