In recent years, mental health has become a very important issue for communities and legislature. The most vulnerable demographic in this area is teenagers and young adults.
Almost half of all mental health conditions begin or start showing symptoms by age 14. Schools have a rare opportunity to give students tools to help them and allow them to live with mental health conditions.
The Utah legislature has responded by creating HB 532, Student Health and Wellbeing Amendments. They insure a multi-tiered layer of support. So parents, school administrators, personal therapists, and health care providers can all get information about the students that they care for. I think that bringing these resources more prominently into schools would be a big step towards decreasing levels of depression and other mental health related concerns in Utah’s youth.
It is very important that students struggling with mental health are able to find support and tools. It is important for parents, school administrators, and other people who interact and are for students to be informed about their mental health. This creates a support system for the student through the adults that care for the mt every day and allows concerns to be shared from school therapists to parents or from parents to healthcare providers. This will help the student find the support that they need through therapists in and outside of school and their healthcare provider.
This bill will bring a more prominent mental healthcare staff to public high schools to increase amounts of mental health screening and inform all students about mental illness and support systems.
According to the SHARP survey, in 2023, 37% of students said that they felt sad or hopeless. In 2025, that number dropped to 28% with roughly 14% still considering suicide. The most terrifying number of them all, 43% of students who felt sad, hopeless or suicidal didn’t talk to anyone about it or reach out for help. This percent closely correlates with the 8.8% of students who reported that they felt unsafe in school.
There is an undeniable importance of creating environments where students feel safe to share their struggle and receive help. Schools are literally put in place to prepare young people for the world and their adult lives.
How can schools effectively do this if many of their students struggle with mental health and aren’t given the tools they need?
Without school involvement in mental health parents are usually left to deal with this alone. There are many reasons why this could be a problem, like the parents neglecting the problems their child has brought up or the student not feeling comfortable to ask their parent for help. In general the more people a student has the potential to reach out to, the more likely they are to reach out.
As a high school student I have experienced a lot in the realm of mental health. Many of my friends have reached out asking for help and it has been a huge part of my life recently.
After experiencing so much with friends struggling, I have seen the importance of having a trusted adult to be able to talk to about these topics. Not only is it important for struggling teens to reach out but to reach out to the right people. A sixteen year old is not going to be able to help to the extent that it is needed.
School therapists are very important because worried friends of struggling students also have an easy place to share their concerns.
