Hayden Turnbow

ENG 2010
8 February 2021
Profile Project

Growing up in mentally unhealthy Utah

Growing up in Utah could be a great benefit to some, yet a great burden too most. There are a
variety of factors at play with our increasing mental health decline for youth, “actors considered in the
report included poverty, chronic school absence, child abuse and neglect, foster care placement, maternal
education levels, maternal mental health and uninsured rates of children.”(Imlay 05) When children are
faced with these burdens which one cannot overcome alone, they are in desperate need of care, love, and
help. However, our youth in Utah are staggeringly not being provided that help when its so desperately
needed, “But almost 40% of youth ages 12-17 with depression did not receive treatment or counseling,
researchers say.”(Imlay 05). This is a huge failure for our youth, but this mental unrest doesn’t stop in
childhood. In October of 2018, the Utah Department of Health issued an Adolescent news report which
reported increased mental health concerns. Of these statistics, these are the ones that stand out to me,
“27.3% of students reported feeling sad or hopeless. 20.6% of students reported psychological distress.
18.1% of students seriously considered suicide. 14.3% of students made a suicide plan. 7.7% of students
made one or more suicide attempts.”(Connect, 2018) These are only the statistics for the youth of our
population. Our youth is supposed to be riddled with joy and pure hope for our future, yet a large
proportion of our youth is plagued with mental illness.
Conversations about mental health are never easy, especially if it is personal. I interviewed a
couple of my friends who had gone through the same upbringing that I had, and they had many insightful
conversations and stories to tell about their mental health. My friend, who I will call Joseph, was raised as
a normal mormon boy. He was born and raised into a traditional mormon family, and he truly believed in
their teachings. However, by the time that High School came around, and he began to do his very own
research and internal investigations, he had soon fallen out of his faith. Losing a religion could easily
break someone, however losing your faith in mormonism, especially in Utah, could amplify those feelings
ten fold. He panicked and he didn’t know what to do, he asked questions of “should I just pretend?”,
“should I not go to church?”, “should I tell my grandparents?”. Both of his parents were in separate states,
and he lived with his very mormon grandparents, and he simply did not know what to do. So he went on
his gut instinct and told his grandma that he no longer believed in mormonism, and he wanted to stop
going to church. His grandma began to cry. Full on tears of anguish, frustration, confusion, and sadness.
She started yelling at him, “It's those no good friends of yours! You will go to church and learn to believe
no matter what! You don’t know yourself, nor do you know what's best for you. That's it. Said and done.
Or else you do not have a place in this household.” My friend Joseph then was forced to go back to
church under threat of getting kicked out. This then led my friend to a feeling of isolation, depression, and
anxiety about life in general. When the person that was supposed to help him turned on him in an instant,
he felt alone. Not only that, but he didn’t want to talk to counselors because they were always busy, full,
and or unhelpful and unattentive. I then asked why they didn’t go through with kicking him out, his
response was a simple, “because I am straight.” He then talks about how few of the kids that he grown up
alongside in the church felt isolated and oppressed due to their sexual orientation, and the statistics back it
up, “Though Youth Futures is for any homeless teens, about fifty percent of those who are homeless in
Utah are “not straight,” says Kristen Mitchell.”(Harrison, 2017). And according to the same post, over
52% of those teens say they have experienced suicidal ideation. My friend, even though he has been hurt
so badly by his grandparents, still thanks them for letting him stay at home, even if it is rough.
I heard similar stories in all of my friends, about being unable to talk to anyone, and having all of
these external burdens thrown upon them. Mental health in Utah is at an all time low, especially for our
youth, and this often leads to disasterous consequences, “The teen suicide rate in Utah is DOUBLE the
national rate, and has increased more than five times faster than the national average.”(Connect, 2018)
This doesn’t only affect our youth, it also affects the adults of Utah. In a KFF Analysis of U.S Census
Bureau, the percentage of adults who have reported symptoms of anxiety and or other depressive
disorders that have not had counseling or therapy was 26.6% in utah, as opposed to 22.5% in the rest of
the united states (Published: Nov 19, 2020.) Creating a profile based on mental illness in Utah has been a
daunting and hard task. However I soon realized that a majority of people I have interviewed and talked
to shared similar experiences. We in Utah need more school mental health advisors and counselors, and
we need a better way for people to get help. If my friend Joseph had access to a mental health advisor
they would have been able to talk and process his emotions in a way that was beneficial, healthy, and
could help him talk to his grandma about his thoughts and feelings. However because of the fact that he
didn’t have someone to talk to, he had to live under burden for years and years. Utah is an amazing place,
we just need to become more conscious of our mental health. Joseph’s story isn’t an isolated incident in
the slightest, it is an ongoing problem, and it is up to us to help stop it, and make growing up in Utah an
amazing experience.

References:

Connect, S. (2018, November 04). Two new REPORTS Highlight trends in UTAH Adolescent
health: Mental health and suicide remain top concerns. Retrieved February 09, 2021, from
https://connectsummitcounty.org/two-new-utah-adolescent-mental-health-reports/#:~:text=The
%20Utah%20Department%20of,of%20students%20seriously%20considered%20suicide.

Harrison, M. (2017, December 07). The plight of homeless youth in the Mormon Heartland.
Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-plight-of-homeless-
yo_b_10205650

Imlay, A. (2020, October 05). Report: Utah needs more early childhood mental health services.
Retrieved February 17, 2021, from https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/10/5/21502446/news-early-
childhood-mental-health-services-kem-gardner-policy-institute-university-of-utah

Published: Nov 19, 2. (2020, November 20). Mental health and substance use state fact sheets.
Retrieved February 09, 2021, from https://www.kff.org/statedata/mental-health-and-substance-use-
state-fact-sheets/utah/#:~:text=As%20shown%20in%20the%20figure%20below%2C%20in
%20Utah%2C%2065.8%25,not%20receive%20mental%20health%20treatment.