The Park City School District is taking on — with a lot of help from friends — what the professionals have declared a mental health crisis among the young.
Depression, anxiety and bullying have grown epidemic, in no small part thanks to social media addiction. Thinking about suicide has risen, and carrying it out by 2021 had exceeded 6,500 Americans between the ages of 10 and 24, according to the Pew Center. This is the second leading cause of death for children and teens.
Adolescent girls are the most at risk, and social media has emerged as a dangerous carrier of a contagion less obvious than COVID.
Panelists representing Live Like Sam, the Utah School Mental Health Collaborative, government agencies and others spoke in turn Wednesday evening at Park City Hospital’s Blair Education Center about their role on a team working ever closer together on behalf of local students.
Fun and fundraising fuel for Live Like Sam’s part will come soon at The Marquis on Main Street — Saturday, Sept. 21, including local “American Idol” finalist Wyatt Pike and Neil Diamond cover band Super Diamond. Tickets: livelikesam.org/gala
This was the more serious counterpart to a gala, the long warm hug that says we’ve got you to those giddy moments when you realize you’re so happy to be alive and sharing the phenomenon in this community, despite all.
The core, the catalyst to all this of course is as dark as it gets for a family, a greatest fear come true and now what? Live Like Sam’s founders lost a son and brother to a ski accident nine years ago, in October 2015, at the age of 16, not so long after winning the U.S. Junior Men’s National Championship in combined freeskiing.
Sam’s father, Ron Jackenthal, said plainly on Wednesday he was lost and needed the kind of help that his organization aims to deliver for Park City’s kids.
Underscoring the why of this team, a video showed how Sam lived larger than life and then Summit County Behavioral Health Director Aaron Newman, a Live Like Sam board member, talked about a community wake-up call when two junior high students died in 2016 of drug overdoses.
“The community realized this is an issue for us,” Newman said. “We had to find a better way to do this.”
Step by step, the county and the school district, the university and the state and others have learned to work ever more collaboratively, he and others who spoke said.
In Utah, the entity responsible for youth mental health is the county rather than a school district, he said. With state funding, the county was able to triple the mental health clinicians working in the schools from three to 10, along with beefing up crisis service with professionals available to help to six days a week, around the clock.
He encouraged the audience to download the app Safe Utah, a crisis line, which he credited as lifesaving. He also pointed out a flaw with the nationwide 988 mental health crisis phone number: For people with out-of-state numbers, the pickup is in that number’s area code, not Utah. Call 801-587-3000 instead, he urged.
Park City School District’s newly created mental health coach, Jed Thomas, a school psychologist, acknowledged the district’s issues with student bullying that culminated in an ugly civil rights report last spring that in its way has galvanized the district to do better.
“Many of you know this,” he said. “Probably the No. 1 protective factor for well being and resiliency is a trusting relationship with an adult.”
Through the University of Utah and grad students, the district has a relative wealth of access to mental health help, he said.
Along with the university and associated Huntsman Mental health Institute, Live Like Sam works with app-based Thrive and WeBeWell to extend its wellness and resiliency efforts among students. The founders of each also spoke.
Thrive, a state-certified, evidence-based mental wellness program, was developed in conjunction with and overseen by WeBeWell, that teaches local youths life skills.
The founders showed statistics about the pernicious effects on kids from social media, perhaps most responsible for an astonishing rise in anxiety in recent years. Cheers rose among the audience at the mention of keeping cell phones out of the classroom at the Park City School District, part of a nationwide drive now including statewide bans.
Live Like Sam’s fundraising efforts are key to supporting the team jelling around mental health wellness in the schools.
Jackenthal said the nonprofit he and his daughter, Skylar, launched five years ago expects to raise $500,000 this year to support the effort.