Action Forum for Youth 2022

On May 12, 2022, Influence the Choice partnered with Issaquah School District and Issaquah Schools Foundation to host a virtual Action Forum for Youth. Its purpose was to provide community leaders with the vital information to understand our ISD students’ current mental health needs and to seek solutions to the challenges facing today's youth.

This year’s forum started with a presentation from Dr. Nathan Brown, TrueBearings LLC, synthesizing the 2021 Healthy Youth Survey for students in the Issaquah School District.

The Healthy Youth Survey has been around for decades in Washington State. It is designed to track trends in youth behavior and identify protective factors and risk factors that students experience concerning the potential for substance abuse, mental health issues, and positive outcomes concerning wellness and well-being. The data can identify many Internal Protective/ Risk Factors (attitude, perception of norms, and sense of control) and External Protective/Risk Factors (family, peers, and community) that either support students in moving toward healthy outcomes or work against moving towards healthy outcomes. The outcomes we need to be concerned about today include Mental/Behavioral Health (Depression, anxiety, suicide, bullying & harassment) and Substance use (Alcohol, Marijuana, and E-cigarettes/ vaping). Dr. Brown shared the data over the years as follows:

Anxiety: Higher levels of reported anxiety in ISD for 10th and 12th grades than overall levels in Washington State. Anxiety levels in females are much higher than in males in ISD from 8th to 12th grade. There has been a significant rise since the pandemic, and COVID-related anxiety is 2-4 times higher in 6th grade than in other grades.

Depression: In all three grades, fewer ISD students report feeling less sad/hopeless than the state average. More females experience depression than males. The rates are rising significantly for 10th and 12th grade since the pandemic, but 6th grade does not have a significant rise.

Suicide: During the past 12 months, the numbers are higher than many of the reported incidents through law enforcement and hospitals because there are suicide attempts that are made and never recorded.

Substance Use: During the last 30 days, the number of days students use the given substance (alcohol, marijuana, and vaping in this study) at least once generally rose from 8th to 10th to 12th grade. The rate has a steeper rise by the time of 12th grade. However, substance use has significantly dropped in 2021 in all three grades. One of the reasons might be because it is harder for minors to get access to these substances during pandemic years.

Enjoyment of School: Declining school enjoyment for both 8th and 12th graders with improving (comparable volume) for 10th graders. The 6th grade rate is relatively flat without a big change.

Prosocial School Involvement: ISD 8th and 12th grades have higher levels of prosocial school involvement than the statewide average, while ISD 10th grade experienced the opposite.

Hope Index: Overall, ISD students experience a higher sense of hopefulness than the statewide average.

So, what are the factors that promote positive activity concerning mental health and substance abuse? What are the factors that promote harm? The answer is working with youth to identify the protective and risk factors: Internal Factors (Perception of parents, perception of peers, and perception of choice) and External Factors (Family support, community support, peer support, and prosocial involvement).

During the second part of the event, a panel of students, Julia Kroopkin (TECH), Addie Powell (TECH), and Cameron Ma (Skyline High School), provided their perspectives of the data and how it translates into what they are seeing within their friend groups and in school.

Question 1: Data shows a significant drop in vaping, not just in our schools but in the state. How does this data compare to what you experience at your schools?

Addie Powell: I think why the numbers have decreased is simply lack of access. I don't think the desire to do it has gone away. I would say it's honestly increased. The fact that it's gone down is shocking, and that is not what I would have guessed. Cameron Ma: I would agree that it would be a little bit shocking that the numbers have decreased. Maybe I wasn't aware of it. Lack of access is a really good point as well.

Question 2: How do you think the pandemic has impacted alcohol use amongst teens? Are you surprised by the reduction in that data as well, and do you think that trend will continue?

Cameron Ma: I would say that it does still surprise me. I think it seems like the same for a long time. My two older brothers told me their experiences in high school. They're a lot older, and they think that it's relatively the same as what I share with them. Another reason that I could see it declining is because of COVID forcing us to be stuck with our families. That has led to closer relationships in some circumstances, which could lead to potential growth within a parent-child relationship. Thus, it leads to not necessarily needing to drink alcohol, or they don't really care anymore or don't get or rebel in that sense either.

Julia Kroopkin: The reason that I first think of is during the pandemic, there weren't parties happening. People weren't going to friends’ houses as much. For the most part, that is where high schoolers are drinking and having alcohol and having access to alcohol. I personally would not be surprised to see the rates of using alcohol go up again once we're back to a slightly more or less COVID-strict world. I think when the party scene coming back, that's probably going to be increasing again.

Addie Powell: I would definitely say drinking is more of a social thing among high schoolers, where vaping is kind of an independent behavior. I think just simply not being around other peers, such kind of the alcohol party scene just faded out.

Question 3: Social Media Influencers. Things like YouTube or Twitter or Instagram don’t have limitations on whether or not an influencer is vaping while on screen or using alcohol on screen. Do you think that impacts students that are coming up, especially at a younger age? Or do you say they may be doing it, but I’m still going to make the choices?

Julia Kroopkin: I think that it could impact younger students but probably not as much for older students.

Cameron Ma: I think that with younger students, they look up at those individuals in social media a little bit more. When you're younger, you could like the first man on the moon or like someone very ambitious that you've never met. But as you get older, you stop caring as much about those people that don't really affect you and your personal life. You start to really look up to and get certain attributes from those that surround yourself by and that are the closest people to you.

Question 4: How much do you think the increase in feeling sad is related to the events of the past two years really through what students went through with COVID, and what other factors do you think might be contributing to the rise in depression beyond living through the pandemic over the past two years?

Julia Kroopkin: I would say that the pandemic definitely has a lot to do with it. I know that friends of mine went through a lot of isolation, and dealing with that was really hard throughout the pandemic. I think isolation is a key part of the rise in depression. The overwhelm and stress can often get to students and create the spiral and those mental health challenges.

Cameron Ma: I would totally agree with that. Isolation within COVID and being quarantined, especially for those that might not necessarily have the best relationship with their parents, definitely had the biggest mental effect on them. But at the same time, I would also agree with the fact that the stress and the anxiety come with coming back to school from COVID. The pressure of having to do academics, get good grades as well as extracurriculars like being in clubs or sports, it is just part of the social pressure and culture that is within the Issaquah School District, which has made us feel even more overwhelmed and anxious as we're coming back.

Question 5: Recently, I heard somebody say that having the social stamina for a full day of school is exhausting, and are you finding so? And a year of feeling very isolated, has that been a real struggle to reengage?

Addie Powell: ... And then, going back to school, it's like we're all dumped into this. It's tiring. Not only are we dealing with school, but now we're back into finals. I had my first set of normal finals for over two years, and I don't know how I did it. I honestly don't know how I got through my first semester of ninth grade and got through finals. And then when we got back to school, you also have all the number of fights that went on like physical punching; it was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was like you let a bunch of wild animals back into this cage, and we all had to figure out how to work together again. There's just a lot of social pressure, and I think it will continue to rise, especially as we all try to adapt again. So, I would not be surprised if the depression has increased.

Question 6: Do you think the bullying data numbers would be different if we were to have that survey today rather than in October when school had just started back up?

Addie Powell: I would definitely think they would be higher. When we all came back, we were on our best behavior because we were happy to be back in person and not stuck in front of a computer. It was the honeymoon phase. Now we’re getting back into it, I would say they’ve definitely gone back up.

Cameron Ma: I would actually argue for the lesser extent of that. I think, at least at Skyline, we’re at such a stage that everyone is really burnt out, especially personally since I'm in the International Baccalaureate Career program. A lot of the students I surround myself with are also in the IBCP program or IB diploma program or other students in general in my grade; we're all so stressed out that none of us really care in that sense about how other people present themselves right now. I think it would be about the same only because we're so burnt out. We don't necessarily care that much about people that are not our friends.

Question 7: Are we getting to the point where bullying people is starting to become uncool? Are people starting to step up and go, hey, that’s not cool to be treating that person that way?

Julia Kroopkin: I do think so. Recently in my school, there's definitely the vast majority of people in the scene saying, “Hey, that's not okay!”. They're checking in with the person. They're talking to teachers about it. It just feels like bullying really isn't cool.

Question 8: What do you see about or feel about increased online gaming use? Is that an additional social use area that we need to track? Some students don’t have a lot of in-person relationships as much as they do their online friends. Is that something we need to start considering?

Julia Kroopkin: I don't really think so. Online friends are legitimate friends; that's something the older generations have trouble seeing a lot of the time. I don't really think that it's an issue which needs to be tracked.

Addie Powell: I don't think it's necessarily something that you need to be tracking. I would say more so teaching online safety because it's not going away. It is ingrained for this generation. Rather than preventing students from doing it, teaching them how to be safe while doing online games. Don't give people your information to people you don’t know.

To watch the complete video of this presentation, visit: https://www. influencethechoice.org/healthyyouth-survey-data.html