Data, partnerships are keys to improving youth mental health

Counties must proactively build relationships across the behavioral health continuum and invest in data-informed programming tailored to community needs to strengthen youth mental health, mental health professionals said Sunday at NACo’s Annual Conference. 

Johnson County, Kan. collects data through Sequential Intercept Mapping, tracing how people with mental health and substance use disorders move through the criminal justice system. That process show how youth move through the foster care system to identify opportunities to provide early support, according to Tim DeWeese, director of the county’s Mental Health Center.

“How do people flow through that system? What are the impacts and the overlaps where the community mental health center could come in contact with young people within the schools?” DeWeese said. “It was a matter of really developing that information, developing that map, then evaluating where we had good points of contact and then taking a constructive, critical look at where we were missing those points of contact.”

Every youth brought into detention is screened with an eight-question mental health screening evaluation. If they screen positive, youth are provided with further follow-up and connections to resources, DeWeese said. 

“The idea is that as a young person maybe comes in contact with multiple systems, that you’re able just to pull them into the medical health system as opposed to going into those other systems,” he said. 

Cultivating an open dialogue around mental health throughout the community decreases stigma and saves lives, DeWeese noted.  

“It only takes one of us, one adult, to demonstrate a listening ear and hear [a youth’s] voice empathetically and non-judgmentally to be able to change the course of those kinds of things,” DeWeese said. 

Being proactive in relationship-building before disaster strikes is critical, said Celeste Nevarez, chief clinical officer of Emergence Health Network, which serves as the Local Mental Health Authority for El Paso County, Texas. 

“Like any other relationship, the more we talk and are in preparation for a disaster, the more the quality of our work improves,” Nevarez said. “If we’re pointing fingers at each other, that’s a difficult place to operate out of.”

The response to a 2019 racist attack at an El Paso Walmart — one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history — brought the importance of cross-collaboration into focus.

“It was devastating, but because we had relationships already with those community stakeholders — county law enforcement, our health department, everybody that we worked with collaboratively — behavioral health was part of the conversation from the get-go,” Nevarez said. “And that was so helpful to be part of the conversation, not as an afterthought, but from the very beginning, so preventative care is key.”

To be able to provide youth with access to quality mental health care, costs have to be shared across multiple systems, DeWeese said. 

“Youth mental health … is a community issue that demands a community response,” he said. “And therefore, you need to be able to work as a community, whether that’s through partnerships or as county governments coming together with multiple departments.”