Dr. Megan Smith Joins Panel on Idaho Teen Mental Health

City Club of Boise forum participants (left to right): moderator Bea Black, Allyson Alden, Juliet Charron, Dr. Megan Smith, Janelle Stauffer, and Scott Curtis.

Communities for Youth’s (C4Y’s) Executive Director, Dr. Megan Smith, served as a panelist at the City Club of Boise’s recent forum, Are the Kids O.K.? Solutions for Idaho’s Teen Mental Health Crisis.

Dr. Smith was joined by four other panelists, including Director Juliet Charron from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, Janelle Stauffer, a licensed therapist and founder of the Resiliency Center of Idaho, Scott Curtis, CEO of Idaho Youth Ranch, and college student Allyson Alden from Boise State/BroncoBOLD. The panel was moderated by Bea Black.

The panelists discussed a range of topics related to youth mental health and took questions from the audience. Dr. Smith focused much of her time on the panel discussing the importance of understanding and addressing the root/upstream causes of youth mental health challenges.

For example, she noted that one of the issues that Communities for Youth has identified across many communities is that Idaho’s middle and high school students lack an adequate level of social connection to peers, family, and their larger communities, and that this is strongly related to youth mental health.

Dr. Smith and other panelists also emphasized the need to address community conditions and environments that contribute to these types of issues, rather than just focusing on treating or fixing individual young people.

The full panel discussion is available via Boise State Public Radio

A special thank you to the City Club of Boise for inviting Dr. Smith and platforming this important issue.

Additional Coverage

'Kids are not OK': Panelists highlight mental health struggles among Idaho youth (coverage by Idaho Education News)