Youth want more mental health support, assessment finds
Published 2:43 pm Monday, November 17, 2025
Clatsop County has completed its Youth Prevention Needs Assessment, and the results? Young people say they need more mental health, social and communication support.
Phase I of the assessment, which included focus groups, community leader interviews, a community survey, and project management, began in March of 2025 and concluded in June of 2025. Phase II, which includes follow-up and final reporting, will be completed by Dec. 30, 2025.
The county paid Public Health Consultant Heidi Berthoud $82,870 for conducting the assessment that surveyed 65 youth.
The results will be used in planning where the county’s tobacco, alcohol and drug prevention funds are allocated, according to Jill Quackenbush, Clatsop County deputy director of public health and health promotion manager.
The assessment was geared toward understanding middle and high schoolers, Berthoud said at a Nov. 5 county commission meeting.
“The benefit of conducting this youth prevention needs assessment is to understand what youth-specific prevention issues need to be addressed,” said Berthoud. The assessment was geared as preventative care for young people in the early stages of being introduced to substances, she said.
While parents harbor concerns about youth encountering illicit substances in the community, Berthoud said she heard “over and over again” from youth that they want more communication and education about illicit substances. “They want people to talk to them.”
In the field of mental health, kids, parents, caregivers and educators all indicated that supporting the mental health of young people is important so they don’t turn to substances as a coping mechanism, Berthoud said.
And, expanding youth social environments is key to supporting mental health.
“They want to feel like there is a safe place they can go (and) hang out,” she said.
Of those surveyed, most self-reported they receive the majority of their substance use information from social media, followed by school, friends/classmates, parents and then family. Because of this, Berthoud said prevention should start earlier than most parents may think.
“By eighth grade they’re already experimenting with some of these things, and they already have some awareness about some of this,” said Berthoud. “Having these conversations early and often is really important. And starting it maybe much earlier than you might think … it might be an elementary school conversation.”
Seventy-five percent of the educators surveyed said they have never helped a student find support for substance abuse, even in an informational setting.
“More than 50% were not that confident in engaging parents in conversations about substances,” either, said Berthoud. If the setting included guest lecturers and evidence-based curricula, educators were more confident in engaging in those types of conversations.
“Young people want to know why they’re being told not to do something,” said Berthoud. “Not in a fear-based way — (young people) talked about ‘we just want to understand what’s happening and why.’”
Clatsop County Commissioner Mark Kujala said because he has children, the assessment results interest him.
“As a parent of a 10- and 5-year-old, this is of particular interest to me, and targeting our efforts around prevention,” said Kujala. “My young girls, they pay a lot of attention to social media.”
Now the county must decide how to use the information provided to them, said Quackenbush, and assess what course of action will have the largest collective impact.
