Helping Communities Promote Youth Mental Health

Product Description

The summer 2008 issue of the Northwest Bulletin: Family and Child Health, is now available online at http://depts.washington.edu/nwbfch/. This issue focuses on the communities and schools that are critical to promoting youth mental health. As children grow into young adults, they look to the peers and adults in their lives to model appropriate behaviors, provide opportunities to gain skills and recognition, and provide emotional support. Public health professionals are critical in supporting communities in these roles by providing them with the information, tools, structures, and resources they need. In the summer 2008 issue: Michelle Bell discusses the importance of building effective community networks and how public health professionals can support those networks. Kevin Haggerty et al. observe that information on how to promote youth mental health is widely available but the challenge is to get this information to the people who work with youth. His article is also accompanied by a short piece by Tracy Brazg on an innovative professional/youth/community collaboration technique, called Photovoice. (Tracy is a recent graduate of the Maternal and Child Public Health Leadership Training Program: she used the technique in her MPH thesis project.) Robin Mack et al. give information about the development of a program to provide tools and resources to support mental health services for American Indian and Alaska Native youth. Mickey Kander highlights strategies to support stable living situations for youth in out-of-home care. Deborah Shattuck describes a school for homeless children. The state reports highlight innovative programs to help communities promote youth mental health. There's also a table that compares each state’s use of versions of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System to collect information on risk and protective factors in adolescence.