F6.02 - Oral Session: Investigating the Application of Multi-level Prevention Strategies for the Youth Mental Health Crisis

Brief Abstract Summary: Explore an upstream prevention approach to expanding communities’ capacity to effectively address the youth mental health crisis locally. Many existing policies and programs support individual level methods of addressing mental health, yet many fall short of significantly improving outcomes over time. Our data driven, community-engaged initiative, based on the Icelandic Prevention Model, indicates that loneliness is a key driving force for depression, anxiety, and suicidal behaviors in the middle and high school students living in a midsize community in a Mountain West state. We applied Bronfenbrenner’s socioecological frame to examine the salient risk and protective factors for loneliness in order to address mental health challenges in this community. This work provides evidence to support the importance of multi-level intervention approaches. Implications for innovative policy, advocacy, and practice at both the local and global level will be discussed.

Detailed abstract description: Attendees will examine a novel approach to addressing the youth mental health crisis. This approach employs data-driven decision making and authentic community engagement to create meaningful changes at the root cause level, thus moving the prevention activities further “upstream”. Using data to determine salient risk and protective factors for depression at the local level, researchers then co-create plans through cross sector collaboration. In the current investigation, the analysis indicated higher loneliness was associated with higher depression. Thus the drivers for loneliness, across multiple domains of the socioecological model, were assessed. A total of 7,737 responses were collected, of which 4,154 were junior high school students and 3,583 high school students in grades 6-12. All participants were from a midsize community in a Mountain West state. Multiple regression was used to test the patterns of association across the socioecological model. This regression analysis revealed 55% of the variability in loneliness is impacted by contributions of the family, peer, school, and individual domains. Specifically, loneliness decreased as students reported higher scores for family, peer, school, and individual indicators. Indicators at every level of the socioecological model were significantly associated with loneliness providing evidence for the importance of multi-level interventions. Once these factors were identified, the results were brought back to the community and strategies were co-created at each level. Presenters will highlight these results, preliminary trend data showing some early successes, and give attendees concrete steps to adapt this work to their communities. This presentation encourages public health educators and advocates to incorporate multi level, upstream prevention approaches that generate meaningful and sustained change in youth mental health.