Statistic after statistic shows that many of today’s young people are struggling. In the 2022-23 school year, more than a quarter of Maryland high school students reported their mental health was “not good at most or all times.” And the Centers for Disease Control reported nationally, 40% of high school students experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.
Yet amid all that trouble, there’s hope. And in this project – “Youth Mental Health: What Works?” – student journalists at the University of Maryland explore not only the mental health problems facing America’s youth, but also solutions that appear to be working.
The first story in this series — “Maryland budget crunch prompts lawmakers, Gov. Moore to trim youth mental health effort” — details how the state’s fiscal troubles imperil its new effort to address the youth mental health crisis. A county-by-county look at the state’s youth mental health grants accompanies the first story. Other stories in the series will appear weekly through the spring.
The Local News Network at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism won a $7,500 grant to fund this project from the Solutions Journalism Network’s Student Media Challenge. Seven other collegiate journalism outlets also won grants for the 2024-25 academic year, the third in a row in which the Solutions Journalism Network offered awards to collegiate journalists to produce stories on youth mental health.
“The promise of the Student Media Challenge is to provide student journalists with the tools and funding to report on responses to the most pressing problems on campus and in college communities,” said Michael Davis, training and curriculum manager at the Solutions Journalism Network. “Highest on that list of topics is the state of mental health in an era of housing and food insecurity, the specter of gun violence, sexual, assault and crime on campus, and the lingering effects of a global pandemic, which caused a massive disruption in social development. The facts are undeniable, with rising rates of anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, and suicides in colleges and universities coast to coast.”
The Solutions Journalism Network promotes rigorous reporting on solutions to social problems, their effectiveness and their limitations.
“Our mission is to transform journalism so that all people have access to news that helps them envision and build a more equitable and sustainable world,” the Solutions Journalism Network said in its mission statement.
Merrill College launched a new course — Enterprise Reporting and Solutions Journalism — whose students are producing these stories. The stories, which will appear weekly through the spring, explore topics such as effective school discipline, peer support and art therapy.
More than two dozen Merrill College students and faculty are working on the project.
Jerry Zremski, director of the Local News Network at the University of Maryland, coordinated the project and serves as its lead editor. Other editors on the project are Capital News Service Director Marty Kaiser, Merrill College Communications Director Josh Land and Kaitlyn Wilson, collaboration manager for the University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. Zremski and Sasha Allen edited the summaries that list the state’s mental health efforts in each county and Baltimore City.
Adam Marton, director of the Capital News Service Digital Bureau, leads the project’s design. Stacey Decker, director of the Capital News Service Audience Engagement Bureau, is designing the project’s engagement efforts. Giuseppe Lopiccolo serves as the project’s chief photographer.
Reporters on the project are: Sasha Allen, Lizzy Alspach, Marwa Barakat, Devin Etta, Sam Gauntt, Lillian Glaros, Adam Hudacek, Ela Jalil, Audrey Keefe, Colin McNamara, Emely Miranda-Aguilar, Caroline Pecora, Max Schaeffer, Tolu Talabi, Alex Taylor, Ethan Therrien, Christina Walker, Joe Wicke and Katelynn Winebrenner.