To support youth in North Slope communities, local health professionals are offering students one-on-one conversations and group gatherings to work through anxiety, build coping skills, manage emotions and connect to their community. This is one example of the push to improve mental health services in the region, especially for young residents.
“They are the future, and it’s an investment that’s worth taking,” said Lynette Hepa, director of the North Slope Borough Health Department. We are “making sure that we’re setting them up for success, not just academically, but building that generational resiliency and that emotional resiliency so that our community and our culture can keep going.”
The North Slope Borough Health Department has been working with the Borough School District, the Inupiat Community of The Arctic Slope and the Arctic Slope Native Association to provide student behavioral health services and expand the psychiatric services in the region. The borough almost tripled the number of clinicians, created more counselor positions in outlying villages, onboarded a clinical supervisor and hired a new registered nurse, Hepa said.
“There’s been a big gap in behavioral health support in general, especially coming out of a pandemic. A lot of things were shut down, especially within our communities, so just the access to the resources that we needed wasn’t there,” Hepa said. “Having the support from this administration to really push to build our capacity, rebuild our services and get back into the communities was a goal.”
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The borough’s Integrated Behavioral Health hired at least four clinicians who mainly serve mental health patients, expanding that capacity almost three times, Hepa said. They also added three positions for counselors who focus more on substance abuse disorders. Those new positions are village-based.
“Our goal with that is to have that sense of trust with somebody who is familiar with the community so that the community members feel comfortable talking to them or coming to them,” Hepa said.
Clinicians and counselors team up and visit village schools on a monthly basis, a clinician often coming first and a counselor following up later, Hepa said. There has also been an effort to add mobility to the program to be able to meet students where they are and add home visits as an option for those who prefer that, she said.
When in the community, the professionals meet one-on-one with students and run groups around social-emotional skills to help students talk about what they are going through, understand their emotions, develop coping skills and build a sense of connectedness with their peers, Hepa said.
Another goal for the visits is streamlining the referral process to get students linked up with services without having a long wait time and spreading the word about services available, she said.
In a related effort, local entities have opened a social-emotional room in the Eben Hopson Middle School in Utqiagvik and are working to open such rooms in other schools and communities, said Jen Brower, director of community services at ICAS. Rooms would be hangout spots for students where they can talk with a mental health professional and each other and get away if they’re feeling stressed or anxious, Brower said.
“It’s important to ensure that these kids have the opportunity to talk about their mental health and how they’re feeling and to have a space where they can go and really work through any issues that they’re having,” she said. “We have high rates of death and suicide, and we just want to make sure that these students have the supports they need.”
Brower said that ICAS, ASNA, the borough health department and the school district have been also planning a trip to provide suicide prevention information, along with a wellness-themed mini-carnival.
In September, the entities provided bullying prevention activities to the students at the Hopson Middle School and at KIITA, Utqiagvik alternative high school that serves the students who need a smaller more flexible learning environment. Utqiagvik students will get a chance to participate in another anti-bullying event during the Halloween weekend of Oct. 25, Brower said.
Improving psychiatric services in the region, for both adults and children, is another focus for the local health professionals.
The borough health department hired a new registered nurse, who will work closely with the borough psychiatrist to start providing more robust psychiatric services to clients. They also have a new extern nurse who will provide psychiatric nursing support.
“We’re rebuilding our team,” Hepa said. “We’re looking to restart our services for evaluations and diagnosis to get the support for our community members to increase their quality of life, and (to also expand) treatment services such as psychotherapy and medication” management.
Borough Mayor Josiah Patkotak presented some of the recent developments within the borough behavioral health services during the October assembly meeting, to a positive response from the assembly members.
Assemblymember Avaiyak Burnell thanked the administration for prioritizing psychiatric health and substance abuse problems
“I can’t thank you enough to see that things are changing to address those issues that plague us across the North Slope,” Burnell said. “It’s a true problem, and people want answers.”