The Maryland Department of Health announced a partnership to create a roadmap to improve the behavioral health of the state’s youth.
The department’s partnership with the Maryland Coalition of Families and Manatt Health will enable new school-based initiatives and investments in youth crisis services, Maryland Health Secretary Laura Herrera Scott said in a news release Wednesday.
By December, the groups plan to conduct a current-state assessment, create an internal report and prepare a road map with proposed policy changes for behavioral health, which includes mental health and substance abuse. The Maryland Coalition of Families is already meeting with stakeholders to provide input on the proposal, which will be presented to the Department of Health, according to coalition development manager Karen Duffy.
“The goal is not to hand them a document that’s going to sit on a shelf,” Duffy said. “They want something that’s actionable, something that can be implemented quickly enough to make the changes that are needed in the children’s behavioral health system.”
While there is no specific direction for the road map yet, some topics the plan could address include early intervention and prevention programs, mobile crisis response systems and inpatient hospital emergency departments, Duffy said.
The Department of Health chose to partner with the Maryland Families Coalition because it has a strong presence in the child health community and workers with “lived experiences” on these issues, said Laura Torres, director of the Department of Health’s Behavioral Health Administration.
“An organization like MCF, which is on the ground and already works regularly with these families, trusts them and also has family members on hand to whom it can reach out,” Torres said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a nationwide increase in mental health issues among children, something that has been a concern for several years now, Torres said.
The state and nation face many behavioral health challenges among children.
Some children who come to the emergency room for mental health crises can’t be transferred to another inpatient bed, forcing them to stay in the emergency room for days, Duffy said. The children have co-occurring disorders, where mental health disorders and substance use can become intertwined, she said.
There is also a workforce shortage among behavioral health providers, Duffy added.
The new partnership is an opportunity for the state to step back and reexamine how it approaches children’s behavioral health, said Sharon Hoover, a professor in the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Rural communities outside of central Maryland tend to suffer from a lack of behavioral health providers, Hoover said. Even in urban areas with more resources, the systems that address children’s behavioral health may not be well coordinated, she said. There tend to be greater vulnerabilities in specific populations, including the LGBTQ+ student population, Hoover added.
Hoover said she was “excited” about the road map and looked forward to the plan delivering behavioral health efforts directly into schools.
“For young people to thrive in school and in their communities, and to be prepared for college and careers, it is absolutely essential that they are mentally healthy,” she said. “If we want to focus on the academic success of our young people, we also need to focus on their mental health.”
