Youth Wellness Zones: Launching a

Place-Based Approach to Support

Youth Mental Health

GOAL

To share our findings from interviews with Youth Wellness Zone site leadership about their strategies in implementing Youth Wellness and how they incorporate youth voice and leadership into their programs.

Background

In the United States, approximately 5.8 million children and adolescents suffer from anxiety, 5.5 million experience behavioral problems, and 2.7 million struggle with depression (CDC, 2023). Less than half of youth with significant mental health needs will access formal treatment due to workforce shortages as well as distrust of formal treatment systems and other challenges in accessing care. Traditional mental health treatment by licensed mental health therapists is an important but, ultimately, limited approach in ensuring all youth have access to resources that will support mental health and wellbeing.

A young person’s environment is a key driver of their mental health outcomes. This includes aspects of the physical or built environment (e.g., presence of vandalism, public infrastructure, safe housing), as well as the social environment (e.g., availability of emotional support, local social norms, experiences of discrimination2, 5, 6). Research demonstrates that living in socially disadvantaged communities leads to negative mental health outcomes over the lifespan and early research shows that improving environmental factors is likely to improve those trajectories5, 6. A place-based perspective posits that community health, specifically mental health, can be achieved by improving social and physical neighborhood environments3. This could be due, at least in part, to place-based approaches being uniquely situated to effectively account for and respond to cultural beliefs and stigmas about mental health.