The Public Health of Western Massachusetts is convening regional partners to create a Youth Mental Health Dashboard for Western Massachusetts. As identified through the 2022 Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs) for the coalition of Western Massachusetts, our youth in Western MA are struggling with their mental health. For example, available data from youth surveys in Western MA indicates that the prevalence of respondents reporting depressive symptoms has generally been increasing, with more than 40 percent doing so in 2023. In 2023, to complement the statewide Behavioral Health Roadmap focused on direct service and crisis intervention, PHIWM developed a Western MA Youth Mental Health Roadmap focused on youth mental health prevention and promotion efforts.
PHIWM worked with numerous regional stakeholders and experts to create evidence-based recommendations for promotion and prevention activities to support our youth’s mental health. We heard from youth and many others about the fantastic work happening in the region and the desire to work with others to address poor youth mental health. We also learned that many were not aware of available data, resources, and evidence-based strategies that would help them address the youth mental health crisis in their communities. Finally, we learned that additional policies and systems were needed to support school and community efforts to address this crisis.
The Dashboard is being created to help connect our communities in Western Massachusetts to needed data and information about resources and evidence-based strategies. It will also allow us to examine regional data to inform the design of collective regional approaches to address poor youth mental health and identify needed policy changes at the state level. The Dashboard will build on the strong data collection and prevention efforts in some counties and communities across the region and expand these efforts and the data collected. Together, partners will design a dashboard to support our collective efforts to support our youth’s mental health. We will post updates as this work progresses.
