Creation of an Arts-Based Prevention Program to Address Youth Mental Health in Schools

• In Event: Arts Learning Across the Lifespan: Social-Emotional, Cognitive, and Physiological Benefits

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to highlight innovative partnerships between a health system, school partners and teaching artists/arts organizations to promote youth resilience.

Youth mental health is worsening across the country, including increases in depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. Strikingly, suicide is the leading cause of death in youth aged 10-14 in Ohio. Access to mental health services and treatment is often a challenge for youth, with 60% of youth with major depression not receiving services in 2017-2018. Social determinants/drivers of health, including social isolation, exposure to trauma and comfort in educational settings and other environmental factors negatively impact mental health outcomes. In urban youth many of these mental health diagnoses are a result of chronic and complex trauma and toxic stress. Increasing attention and resources are focused on promoting mental wellness and access to resources before problems arise. As a result of national data trends, local outcomes and screeners done in school health clinics, we developed a arts-based intervention program to address youth mental health in schools as an upstream approach with innovative partnerships to address youth mental health needs.

The program was created as a psychologically-informed, primary prevention curriculum intended to be delivered during the school day, aimed at addressing trauma and toxic stress in urban youth. It brings professional teaching artists into the classroom, integrating a variety of arts disciplines and media with the curriculum to help address students' social and emotional needs. The teaching artists assist students in expressing themselves and sharing their stories through the arts. This program is a universal intervention in which all students in identified grade levels at participating schools receive the program regardless of their risk status. With regards to demographics, 64% of school district students are Black, 16% Hispanic, 15% White, and 4% identified as other. High school residencies are comprised of 8 weekly sessions and data was collected via survey pre- and post-intervention. Survey results indicated that students who participated in the prevention program reported significant increases in hope, female participants also reported increases in school belonging, and one of the three high school’s participants reported an overall decrease in stress. Limitations include a lack of comparison group and consent rates impacted by limited access to caregivers.

As previously mentioned, prevention of mental health problems is becoming increasingly important as youth mental health is recognized as an emerging public health crisis. Results in this study demonstrate that arts-based prevention programming has the potential to impact critically important factors like hope, stress and school belonging, contributing to overall resilience. More research is needed to establish causal inferences, but the results of this study have the potential to benefit teens and schools and organizations seeking to implement arts-based strategies or curricula for preventing stress and promoting resilience among urban youth.

Authors

• Lisa Ramirez, MetroHealth System

• Linda Jackson

• Courtney Hutchinson, The MetroHealth System (Cleveland, OH)

• Marissa Stock, Cleveland State University