How can schools combat the mental health crisis?

Challenge

Teens in the U.S. are experiencing a mental health crisis. The YRBS Data Summary & Trends Report notes that in the last decade, the number of students who experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness or who seriously considered attempting suicide increased. While data show promising improvements in youth mental health in recent years, there are also concerning declines and persistent disparities. For example, female and LGBTQ+ students were more likely than their peers to have poor mental health.

Schools are at the forefront for action. In About the Division of Adolescent and School Health, data note that schools in the U.S. reach more than 50 million students in grades K–12, providing a unique opportunity to support nearly all young people and improve their mental, physical, and behavioral health. The Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works to improve student access to quality health and physical education, school-based health services, and safe and supportive school environments. DASH uses data and science to drive action to address the most important issues among young people, including the current mental health crisis.

Solution

Westat supports DASH’s mission by helping the Division communicate effectively about its research and proven strategies for supporting youth. Westat provides strategic communication planning, guides social media strategy, develops key messages to translate DASH’s data into action, and creates messages and materials to reach multiple stakeholders.

In direct response to worsening youth mental health trends, DASH released a mental health action guide for school and district leaders. The action guide—a first-of-its-kind product from DASH—provides 6 strategies schools can use to promote student mental health. To promote the guide, Westat worked with DASH’s health communications team to develop a dissemination strategy across multiple channels, including social media, e-newsletters, web, and partner amplification.

We developed graphics and social media content for DASH and partners to use to share the guide. We leveraged CDC’s main social media accounts across X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to publish a series of posts highlighting youth mental health trends and the new resource. These posts were among CDC’s top-performing content for the week, generating more than 800,000 impressions and nearly 14,000 engagements. CDC’s enterprise social media team spotlighted the posts internally as an example of social media best practices in action.

Through Westat’s expertise in education research, behavioral health, and HIV prevention, we also brokered connections to federal partners that could promote the action guide. We collaborated with the Department of Education’s National Comprehensive Center (NCC) team to cross-promote the resource on their social media channels and with CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention team to spotlight the guide on HIV.gov’s roundup of youth mental health resources.  

Overall, promotion efforts led to a surge of more than 115,000 web visits to the action guide and DASH’s related mental health resources in the month following its release.

Results

CDC’s data show that youth mental health has been worsening for more than a decade and that key indicators of poor mental health have reached alarming levels. DASH is putting data and science into action to give schools tools they can use to combat the crisis. As strategic communication partners, Westat helps DASH get information and resources into the hands of school and district leaders, educators, and families so they are better able to respond to challenges facing today’s youth.