Durham Public Health presents 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey results and 2024 State of the County Health Report

Durham County Public Health presented the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) results and the 2024 State of the County Health Report to the Board of County Commissioners, detailing youth mental-health indicators, substance-use patterns and countywide health priorities.

Public Health Director Rod Jenkins introduced the presentation and epidemiologist Savannah Carrico delivered YRBS findings from the 2023 survey, which was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and oversampled Durham County with more than 2,000 student respondents from all eligible Durham Public Schools.

Carrico said the survey found mental-health signals of concern: an item approximating depressive symptoms asked whether students in the past 12 months felt so sad or hopeless for two weeks in a row that they stopped doing usual activities; females were more likely to report such symptoms. "Students reporting depression are five times more likely to consider suicide and 2.7 times more likely to make a suicide plan," she said, and noted correlations with recent…