News & Announcements

With school year underway, St. Luke’s releases videos to help communities support teen mental health

Adult and middle school aged boy walking along a river

By Alexis BennettLast Updated October 12, 2026

Coinciding with the beginning of the school year, St. Luke’s has created three short educational videos to help parents, mentors and community members support teens’ mental health and emotional well-being.

The videos share practical, tangible ways to show up for young people navigating stress, social disconnection and pressure to achieve.

St. Luke’s Community Health and Engagement team created the videos in response to survey data showing that young people report feeling disconnected from peers, trusted adults and their communities. The results indicated that young people experience significant pressure to achieve, often feeling they must excel at everything to be successful. The videos guide parents, community members and youth-serving organizations on ways they can help support young people to feel seen, heard and valued.

The initial data informing the videos came via Communities for Youth, an initiative led by Boise State University that St. Luke’s has backed as a major partner and financial supporter for years. The initiative surveys junior high and high school students annually, with parental consent, at more than 60 schools across the state, gauging students’ overall well-being, including stress, sleep, bullying and more, so results can inspire local, measurable action.

“We’re deeply committed to the overall well-being and ability of our youth to thrive and succeed in all the communities we serve,” said Angie Gribble, senior director of Community Health and Engagement at St. Luke’s. “They’re our future, and we’re doing what we can to support them.”

The first video addresses a pattern seen consistently across the Communities for Youth data: teens who feel supported by a trusted adult report symptoms of depression at notably lower rates than teens who don’t. The trend holds steady across communities.

The data also shows that presence alone isn’t everything.

It is a reminder that how adults talk about risk matters and listen as much as whether they talk about it at all. It’s not just whether you ask them about their day; it’s about truly listening to the answer, doing so without judgement and asking what they need from you in a difficult moment.

The video aims to help adults understand that being a trusted presence is less about a single conversation and more about a consistent one, because teens do better when they know an adult is paying attention.

News & Announcements

With school year underway, St. Luke’s releases videos to help communities support teen mental health

By Alexis BennettLast Updated October 12, 2026

The videos share practical, tangible ways to show up for young people navigating stress, social disconnection and pressure to achieve.

The data also shows that presence alone isn’t everything.

Young people’s beliefs that they must excel at everything to succeed in life is the second video’s focus. Across the communities surveyed, schoolwork and worry about the future consistently rank among students’ top stressors, including studying new material, keeping up with homework and concern about what comes next in their futures. That pressure carries real risks. Students under high academic pressure are consistently more likely to report suicidal ideation than students under low academic pressure.

Communities newer to the survey have shown some of the sharpest divides between high- and low-stress students, a sign of how much room there is to build resilience early in young people, put value on the growth and process instead of the outcomes and why continued engagement and community support matter.

Finally, a third video takes on social connection, which has been a consistent focus on the Communities for Youth initiative. Students who report feeling isolated from peers, family or their broader community are markedly more likely to report symptoms of depression than students who feel connected, a pattern that holds true across nearly every community surveyed.

That consistency is part of why several communities have used survey results to choose social connection as a formal local focus area. It’s often broken into three dimensions of connection: parents and family, connection with a trusted adult outside the home and connection with peers. Some communities have paired it with a focus on self-awareness, choosing both as priorities for the year ahead after identifying them as among the most significant drivers of mental health challenges for local teens.

Continuing to listen

The three videos are built to be short and practical entry points to understand how findings from the data can be applied in simple ways to support youth in our communities. They’re available now, alongside more of the data that shapes them.

“It has been truly rewarding to partner with St. Luke’s to accomplish real upstream prevention in communities across Idaho,” said Dr. Megan Smith, founding director of Communities for Youth in Idaho and professor at the School of Public Health and Population Science at Boise State University. “There is a lot of momentum in a wide range of organizations and people coming together for our young people and making real changes. I look forward to all we can continue to accomplish together.”

St. Luke’s continues to support Communities for Youth as it expands into more schools and communities across the region, driven by the same premise that understanding what kids need starts with listening to them.

The 2026-27 fall surveys will begin soon. St. Luke’s and Communities for Youth are encouraging wide participation to improve the data collected and the resulting resources and interventions provided.

To learn more, visit the Communities for Youth website or contact [email protected].

Continuing to listen

To learn more, visit the Communities for Youth website or contact [email protected].