A coalition of child health advocates is asking a state task force to siphon $150 million from $450 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars to bolster mental health services for the state’s children.
The request came Tuesday from child care providers during a remote press conference that emphasized how an ongoing mental health crisis is crushing children as well as parents and professionals trying to help them.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only helped stoke rising cases of children dealing with emotional and mental trauma, Dr. David Brumbaugh, chief medical officer for Children’s Hospital. Brumbaugh said mental health visits to the hospital’s emergency room were up 73% from January to May, compared to the same period in 2019.
Young patients continue to stream into hospital emergency rooms throughout Colorado and the country, Brumbaugh said, adding that six months ago mental health experts declared a youth mental health ‘state of emergency’ in Colorado.
“The United States is in a national state of emergency for mental health,” Brumbaugh said. “There is just a continued sense of the system just being overwhelmed. It’s palpable.”
Advocates on Tuesday said since children and young adults under 24-years-old make up about one-third of the state’s population, which justifies using one-third of the $450 million for programs to treat that age group.
“COVID has taken a lot from our kids,” Dr. Jenna Glover, a psychologist at Children’s Hospital, said Tuesday. “At this moment, we have an incredible opportunity to give them something they desperately need.”
The Behavioral Health Transformational Task Force is charged with determining how best to spend the American Rescue Plan Act funding. Several groups, including Children’s Hospital and the Colorado Children’s Campaign, wrote the task force a letter detailing how the $150 million should be spent.
Overall, the funding should:
- Strengthen workforce and caregiver support so the supply of providers meets the needs of children and reflects the population they serve.
- Expand the care continuum so that children have culturally competent settings in which to receive care tailored to their acuity, geography and other factors.
- Build a cohesive system that unifies programs to function as a whole so that families served by multiple programs experience seamless coordination.
Ashley O’Day, an 18-year-old college freshman, helped create a peer mental health support group at her former high school. O’Day said Tuesday social media breeds a form of damaging isolation among teens, further harming their mental health.
“You can talk for five hours texting but it’s not going to give you the same connection as going out for coffee,” O’Day said. “It made me personally feel more lonely. I had 5,000 followers but when I tried to get help, nobody said anything.”
