Biden Administration Launches Initiative To Support Youth Mental Health
The Biden administration will launch a new initiative in the fall to address the alarming mental health crisis among youth in the U.S.
The Youth Mental Health Corps, which is a first-of-its-kind initiative, will recruit and train young adults to support their peers navigate mental health issues. Young adults ages 18 to 24 will receive training and certification to help youth in schools, community based organizations and community health clinics, while also creating a pipeline for these volunteers to pursue a mental health career path.
The initiative, which was created by AmeriCorps, the Schultz Family Foundation, and other organizations, will be launched in some states with the least amount of mental health support.
“Far too many young people are struggling with their mental health and unable to get the support they need. We all have a role to play in supporting youth mental health and creating a world where young people thrive,” U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said in a statement.
The youth mental health crisis, which has progressed over recent years, is a “defining public health issue of our time,” Murthy said. Data from the Centers for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that the number of youth that experienced “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” increased between 2011 and 2021, reaching 42% in 2021.
Experts say that the rise in mental health issues among youth in the U.S. could be correlated to isolation and rejection caused by a lack of real life interactions and the use of social media.
“These new platforms transformed social relationships in a way that often makes you feel left out and less than others,” Rausch told HuffPost in April, noting that the way social media evolved between 2009 and 2015 has made it “particularly harmful to adolescents.”
Data also shows that racial discrimination and messaging on social media at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid racial justice movements in 2020 placed Black and indigenous youth of color at a higher risk of developing mental health problems.
But Murphy said that the pandemic merely added to the already existing high rates of mental health issues.
“When you talk directly to young people as well and look even more into the data, you see that even before the pandemic and the decade prior to COVID, there was a 57% increase in the rate of suicide among young people,” Murthy said at an event with Axios last month.
Later this year, the initiative will be rolled out in four states ― Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas ― with the intention of expanding to at least seven other states next year.
According to Forbes, 56.8% of youth with depression in Minnesota and 60.3% of youth with depression in Michigan don’t receive mental health services. Data from Mental Health America and the U.S. Census Bureau shows that Texas and Colorado are among the top 10 states with the worst mental health care in the country.
The high rates of youth mental health issues in the U.S. come at the same time as a surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation in several states across the country, including in the four states where the initiative is being rolled out in the fall.
According to a report from the Trevor Project in January 2023, 71% of LGBTQ youth said debates over the anti-LGBTQ bills have negatively impacted their mental health, and 86% of transgender youth reported negative mental health repercussions from the legislation.
Colorado students, especially LGBTQ youth, feel that they are not accepted and can’t be themselves at school, an issue that could be addressed through peer support offered in the corps program at schools, CPR News reported.
HuffPost reached out to the governors of Texas, Colorado, Minnesota and Michigan for comment on the initiative but did not immediately receive a response.