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Idaho Matters

New centers will help Idaho kids in crisis

Idaho Matters takes a look at what happens when teens in the Gem state are experiencing a mental health crisis and how a youth crisis center could help.

Broadcast on:
18 Oct 2022
The proposed Youth Behavioral Health Community Crisis Centers are designed in part to keep kids out of places like the Juvenile Corrections Center Nampa.
The proposed Youth Behavioral Health Community Crisis Centers are designed in part to keep kids out of places like the Juvenile Corrections Center Nampa.( Idaho Department of Juvenile Corrections website.)

When a teenager in Idaho is experiencing a crisis, maybe with drugs or thoughts of suicide, there is too often no place for them to go.

Without a safe place to go for a few hours to get calm and get help, these kids end up either in a hospital or in jail. This can make their trauma worse and further complicate the problems they’re trying to work through.

To try to help those kids Idaho Health and Welfare and the state’s Department of Juvenile Corrections are working to create Youth Crisis Centers around the state where a kid in trouble can spend 24 hours in a safe space to de-escalate the crisis and get help they need.

Monty Prow, the Director of the Idaho Department of Juvenile Corrections and Ross Edmunds, Behavioral Health Administrator for Health and Welfare joined Idaho Matters to talk more about these youth crisis centers.