To Address a Youth Mental Health Crisis, This Funder’s Pushing for Expanded School Services

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Today, many kids are back in school, but the pandemic’s mental health fallout isn’t going away anytime soon. The loss of loved ones, isolation, economic stress, fear of illness, the sudden shift to online learning, missed milestones (e.g., prom and graduation), apprehension about heading back to the classroom and “normal” life—these are just some of the factors that are contributing to what many experts consider a youth mental health crisis. And research suggests young people of color are at highest risk. 

In response, many schools are scrambling to expand mental health services. In the Golden State, Blue Shield of California is working with the California Department of Education (CDE) to boost mental and behavioral health services for the state’s 6 million students. The nonprofit health plan recently announced a $1 million community investment “to help the California Department of Education expand much-needed support for youth mental and behavioral health services within the state’s school system.”

According to state superintendent Tony Thurmond, the new initiative is part of an ongoing effort to build up mental health infrastructure in California schools—an effort he says will require philanthropic support. “In time, California schools will see robust and historic levels of mental health programming, which I believe will provide critical support to students and families,” Thurmond said when Blue Shield’s investment was announced. “Partnerships like this one, between public and private entities, are essential in implementing this vision.”

Note that this donation comes from Blue Shield of California directly, not from the Blue Shield of California Foundation, which is a separate grantmaking entity funded by Blue Shield of California.

Blue skies

Blue Shield’s donation went to Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation, CDE’s philanthropy arm. The funds will support CDE’s efforts to increase access to mental and behavioral health services, expand access to preventive and innovative programming and treatment models, scale youth mental health training for educators, enhance trauma-informed and culturally affirming programing (particularly for Black, Indigenous and youth of color) and provide assistance to families to increase access to mental and behavioral health benefits through Medi-Cal.

The recent gift is part of Blue Shield of California’s BlueSky initiative, a multi-year program to support youth mental health. The program was already partnering with CDE to train educators about youth mental health issues and how to address them.

Mental health has traditionally been considered an area outside the purview of the public education system, and something that families should address on their own—or not. Today, we have a far better understanding of mental health’s impact on learning. As Thurmond put it, “We can’t help our students academically until we take into account their mental health and social-emotional needs.”

David Bond, director of behavioral health for Blue Shield and a pediatric trauma specialist, agrees. “It completely makes sense for schools to be involved in healthcare and mental health access for their students,” he said. “You can’t educate someone who is really hungry and only thinking about how hungry they are, and someone who is in pain is also going to have a hard time learning. That could be a pain in your arm or a pain in your emotional well-being, and until those things are addressed, we’re not going to be able to effectively educate our students.” 

Normalizing mental health—and funding it

Young people today are generally more willing to discuss mental health issues than members of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. This increased openness is likely due to awareness of mental illness as illness (versus a personal failing or freakish defect), normalization of the issue in the media and on social media platforms, and disclosures by celebrities and other prominent individuals about their own challenges.

Bond believes that schools can help encourage this openness by not only providing mental health services, but also educating young people about their own psychological health. “Just as hygiene and taking care of your body and physical education are part of the curriculum, so does mental health education and taking care of your mental health need to be part of the curriculum,” he said. An encouraging development on that front—state legislation just signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom requires schools that offer health education classes to middle or high school students to include mental health content as part of the curriculum.

As a recent New York Times article pointed out, the pandemic may have exacerbated mental health issues among young people, but they existed well before the events of 2020. And according to a 2020 WHO report, it’s a global problem: “Mental health conditions account for 16% of the global burden of disease and injury in people aged 10 to 19 years.” 

Ken Zimmerman, founder and co-director of the Mental Health Strategic Impact Initiative and former director for U.S. programs for Open Society Foundations, called out philanthropy for its anemic investment in mental health in an article for Inside Philanthropy last year, and urged the sector to make it a top priority. Zimmerman pointed out that mental health accounts for only 1.3% of overall foundation investments from 2015 to 2018, and only 5% of foundation spending on healthcare. (In a more recent IP post, Zimmerman flagged some important new developments in the sector).

Barbara Ricci, executive director of Mindful Philanthropy, echoed Zimmerman’s call in another article for IP, underscoring philanthropy’s underinvestment in the mental health of communities of color: “Of those with mental illness, three-quarters of Asian Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and African Americans received no treatment,” Ricci wrote. “Moreover, as the American Psychiatric Association notes, there are alarming differences in treatment: ‘Compared with the general population, African Americans are less likely to be offered either evidence-based medication therapy or psychotherapy.’”

Funders like Blue Shield of California can make a difference by supporting youth mental health. But as Zimmerman and Ricci point out, they could use a lot more company.