Summit County children are experimenting with alcohol and other substances at a lower rate in 2025 compared to recent years, according to survey results published by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month. The Utah Student Health and Risk Prevention survey, or SHARP survey, is administered statewide every two years through local school districts. The survey asks students in sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grade to answer questions related to mental health, alcohol and marijuana usage, screen time and vaping. All three of Summit County’s school districts — Park City, North Summit and South Summit — participated in this year’s survey. “We are seeing very encouraging trends, especially in substance use and several mental health indicators,” said Summit County Director of Behavioral Health Prevention Pamella Bello. “This also helps us identify emerging concerns and areas where we need continuous prevention, and family engagement is essential.” Bello said when the survey was last administered in 2023, approximately 25.5% of students in Summit County reported previous alcohol usage. But in 2025, the percentage of students who had experimented with alcohol lowered to 20.6% — a significant 5% drop. “It’s the same for Utah and across the country, too,” Bello said. “That reinforces for us, who are working in prevention, that prevention strategies are having an impact.” Marijuana usage numbers for Summit County students also dropped from 16.6% in 2023 to 9.7% in 2025, and vaping rates similarly decreased from 15.2% two years ago to 9.6% today. “This is great for our community,” Bello said. “Usually, our community in Summit County is higher than the state (average) with many things, and this survey has shown us that … we are not higher than the state anymore. Even if we don’t compare ourselves to the state, we are always very similar to the rest of the United States.” However, not all of the findings were necessarily positive. Bello said a surprising result from this year’s survey involved the rising use of nicotine pouches, which are small, dissolvable and often flavored packets of nicotine, similar to chewing tobacco but without the need to actually chew or spit out the product. In Summit County, only 3.7% of students were using nicotine pouches in 2023 compared to 8.2% in 2025. “This is a concern, and this is why we want this survey,” Bello said. “We want to see these things so we know how to approach them. Now, I’ll be talking to other departments that work on tobacco use to come up with a plan. This also shows us how youth substance use evolves over time because it’s always something different.” The survey also asked students about their mental health, and a significantly higher percentage of children reported fewer symptoms of depression in 2025 compared to 2023. “In 2025, 44.8% of the kids reported no symptoms of depression, and in 2023, only 27.5% of the kids reported no symptoms of depression,” Bello said. “And the state reports 36.3% of the kids are showing no symptoms of depression … so we are even higher than the state, and in this case, for mental health, we want to be higher.” Bello said the results of the survey were encouraging because they indicated that preventative and educational measures within the county are working. She said it was difficult to attribute the change to any specific program, but the continuous push for community engagement from the Summit County Health Department and other health partners has likely brought substance use and mental health issues to the forefront of parents’ minds. “Prevention works, progress is possible and community engagement matters,” Bello said. “We need these parents engaged and working with us, toward the same goals for our kids and for our community. The choices we make today as a community shape the outcomes of our next generation. That is something that we know, so we all need to work toward the same goals together.” Information on the SHARP survey and its 2025 results is available online by visiting sumh.utah.gov/data-reports/sharp-survey. The post Statewide survey shows declining alcohol use, depression in Summit County children appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less