It’s been more than a year since the American Academy of Pediatrics declared children’s mental health a national emergency, yet rates of anxiety and depression among young people continue to soar as waitlists grow for therapists, hospital beds, and program placements. Communities that have been hardest hit by the pandemic are at the greatest risk, while facing additional obstacles—from racial bias in treatment and inadequate insurance to a lack of culturally competent healthcare providers.
The New York Community Trust is making grants to several nonprofits to address these inequities and bring quality mental health care to more young people.
I’RAISE Girls and Boys International provides free mental health services on-site in struggling and underperforming public schools in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. With our grant, I’RAISE is addressing increasing rates of depression and anxiety among students at public schools like P.S. 178 in Brownsville. I’RAISE’s team of Black and Latinx social workers screen for trauma, suicidal ideation, and depression; develop service plans for students; and provide individual and group counseling, including art therapy and gender identity groups. It also offers educational seminars for teachers on the ways mental health problems manifest themselves in the classroom and simple techniques to support children exhibiting these problems.
“We’re noticing in Brownsville the extreme exposure to violence that our kids have experienced, and that many of our kids were totally traumatized by what happened to their loved ones during the pandemic,” said Shanequa Moore, I’RAISE’s founder and CEO. “A lot of our kids lost loved ones and caregivers, and so did a lot of our teachers.”
Moore said part of her program’s work is to help teachers address their own trauma and create trauma-informed classroom environments for their students. The program is also uniquely poised to help schools with parent engagement, an important factor in supporting students’ mental health.
“One of the things that parents and schools really appreciate is we’re led by Black women and we’re Black mothers ourselves, so we bring that lived experience,” said Moore.
The city’s LGBTQ young people also are struggling to connect with mental health support. Data released by the national Trevor Project showed that more than half of LGBTQ young people in New York State who wanted mental health care were unable to obtain it. LGBTQ young people will receive the assistance they need from the Brooklyn Community Pride Center, which is turning its Crown Heights site into a multiservice hub providing mental health and social support, thanks to a Trust grant. Callen-Lorde Community Center, a leading LGBTQ health and behavioral health care provider, will operate a mental health clinic there.
Mental health challenges also can undermine a jobseeker’s most determined attempts, particularly for young people with justice system involvement, histories of homelessness, and substance use disorders. Stigma and misinformation about mental health treatment is common among young people who come to the Hope Program for a high school equivalency diploma or training for jobs in business services, construction, building maintenance, groundskeeping, and clean energy. This stigma prevents trainees from believing in themselves and sometimes leads them to decline help and leave the program. With Trust support, the Hope Program is enhancing mental health services in its job training programs in the South Bronx and Brooklyn and offering seminars that empower young people to seek treatment.
Both the Brooklyn Community Pride Center and the Hope Program will train staff to recognize signs of trauma and destigmatize mental health treatment for young people.
A recent survey of high school students in Queens found that 35 percent felt so sad almost every day for two weeks that they stopped engaging in normal activities, and 15 percent contemplated suicide. Yet, despite the increasing need, Queens has seen the closure of mental health treatment centers and growing waitlists for services.
The Child Center of New York is tackling this issue by designing a digital system to centralize intakes and decrease wait times for initial appointments for young people in Queens. A grant from The Trust will let young people connect digitally with providers who meet their language and cultural needs, while educating parents about the importance of mental health treatment.