{"id":28080,"date":"2026-11-05T01:35:58","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T01:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/11\/05\/mental-health-program-helps-helena-students-navigate-challenges-seek-help-ktvh\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T01:35:58","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T01:35:58","slug":"mental-health-program-helps-helena-students-navigate-challenges-seek-help-ktvh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/11\/05\/mental-health-program-helps-helena-students-navigate-challenges-seek-help-ktvh\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental health program helps Helena students navigate challenges, seek help – KTVH"},"content":{"rendered":"

HELENA \u2014 Being a teenager isn\u2019t easy \u2014 there\u2019s the pressure of school, homework, friends, social media, maybe sports or a job. All of that can take a toll on mental health, and talking about mental health isn\u2019t easy either. For the past 10 years, Helena Public Schools has offered a course to help students handle mental health challenges and seek help when needed.
The Youth Aware of Mental Health, or YAM, program was developed in Sweden. It takes an evidence-based approach to educating teens aged 13-17 on mental health. Currently, the YAM program is offered in schools in more than 17 countries. It\u2019s meant to break down stigma surrounding mental health, help students develop coping skills and teach them to identify signs of crisis and seek help.
\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is promoting help-seeking behavior mostly, getting students to understand that if they or a friend is in crisis, they know where to go to get help and support,\u201d Joslyn Davidson said.
Davidson is a youth mental health program specialist with the MSU Center for Research on Rural Education\u2014the organization that brings the YAM program to schools across the state. She explained that the three-week program takes students through a variety of scenarios and skits and helps them learn where to find help.
\u201cUltimately, we\u2019re trying to train the brain into the steps of making conscious decisions to seek help,\u201d she said.
Helena Public Schools was one of the first districts in Montana to begin offering the YAM program to freshman, and Davidson was a driving force behind that.
\u201cWe were noticing an uptick in suicides with young people and we wanted to get ahead of it,\u201d Davidson said.
The Montana Office of Public Instruction collects statewide student mental health data through the Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey<\/a>. It\u2019s given out every other year, so while there is no data from 2016, the survey was administered in 2015 and 2017. In 2015, 18.8% of students said they had seriously considered suicide over the past 12 months, and that number rose to 20.8% in 2017.
While those numbers are down now, mental health concerns are still very real among students.
According to the 2025 Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 29.2% of students reported feeling so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more that they stopped doing some usual activities, and 14.3% said they seriously considered attempting suicide over the past 12 months.
\u201cPretty much on a daily basis, our counseling team, admin team, teachers are connecting with kids who are struggling with some sort of mental health something, whether it\u2019s depression, anxiety, unsure of where life is taking them,\u201d Helena High School Principal Brian Kessler said.
The YAM program also collects data, and what officials see is promising.
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen improvements,\u201d Davidson said.
The YAM program is the first in a series of mental health courses students take. Kessler said Helena High School sophomores learn about \u201cquestion, persuade, refer,\u201d which is an emergency response to someone in crisis. As juniors, they go through a signs of suicide curriculum.
\u201cEvery year they\u2019re getting a hit on something and the resources and how to approach that,\u201d Kessler said.
Along with Helena and Capital high schools, the YAM program is also offered at East Helena High School, and it will be taught at the Project for Alternative Learning for the first time this year.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in a mental health crisis, help is available 24\/7. Call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 to be connected to trained professionals and resources.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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HELENA \u2014 Being a teenager isn\u2019t easy \u2014 there\u2019s the pressure of school, homework, friends, social media, maybe sports or a job. All of that can take a toll on mental health, and talking about mental health isn\u2019t easy either. For the past 10 years, Helena Public Schools has offered a course to help students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}