Youth Mental Health Roadmap for Western Massachusetts (2024)

Good mental health is essential for youth to thrive in their lives—from their homes to schools to relationships and beyond. Youth mental health was identified as a priority need in our communities even before the COVID-19 pandemic through Community Health Needs Assessments. This need was made worse by the unprecedented challenges our youth faced during the pandemic. An estimated 45% of youth responding to the MDPH COVID-19 Community Impact Survey reported sustained depressive symptoms that impacted their daily activity in the fall of 2020. This finding is consistent with the high levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms reported from school-based youth surveys in our region.

To support our youth’s mental health, we need to target the full spectrum of support: promotion, prevention, treatment, and recovery. Throughout 2023, the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts convened a range of stakeholders to create a roadmap that prioritizes promotion and prevention efforts, building off the important findings from the Commonwealth’s Promote and Prevent Commission’s 2018 report, as well as the 2021 Massachusetts Behavioral Health Roadmap.

The Roadmap provides recommendations for these promotion and prevention areas, as well as the important need to align community and clinical prevention, support, and treatment work: 
- destigmatizing and normalizing
- social connection
- SEL skills building
- social media
- community-clinical linkages.