Youth mental health in Utah improving, post-pandemic

SALT LAKE CITY — Youth mental health is improving, the further away we get from the pandemic.

That’s according to new research from the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. The number of youth reporting depression is not small. But it is lower than it was the last time they asked.

The latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 37% of the respondents reported feeling so sad or hopeless that they changed their usual activities. It was more than 41% when students were surveyed in 2021.

Utah officials said the number of teens feeling hopelessness spiked about six months after the pandemic started. They said that timing is consistent with societal trauma.

Intermountain Health’s Senior Medical Director for Behavioral Health, Mason Turner, said there could be a connection between the decrease in youth mental health issues and students’ new understanding of themselves. 

“I think that kids, adults, teens came to the realization of what they had been through and really held that they were going to be different moving forward,” Turner said. 

Turner said one of the things younger people learned about themselves is the need for a good work-life balance.

“Teach them to be able to sit with their feelings, to be able to create space for them to process what’s going on. Not just go from one activity to the next.”

Turner added that the pandemic has also created more options for youth mental health services. Still, the state has a long way to go to better meet the community’s needs.

Suggested related reading:

• Intermountain Health to open behavioral health center in Taylorsville
• Utah is lacking school guidance counselors
• Mental health and social media, a Utah child psychologist weighs in

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