{"id":69213,"date":"2024-12-16T14:46:31","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T22:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=69213"},"modified":"2024-12-16T14:46:31","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T22:46:31","slug":"california-launches-4b-youth-mental-health-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=69213","title":{"rendered":"California Launches $4B Youth Mental Health Initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Selen Ozturk<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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With youth mental health worsening, California has launched a new initiative to help kids access free treatment.<\/p>\n

The over $4 billion\u00a0Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative<\/a>\u00a0(CYBHI),\u00a0 part of Governor Newsom\u2019s Master Plan For Kids\u2019 Mental Health announced in 2022, aims to fight the youth mental health crisis through free telehealth apps offering peer support, health care system navigation aid and connection to local providers.<\/p>\n

Between 2019 and 2021, about 1 in 3 California adolescents aged 12 to 17 reported symptoms that met the criteria for serious psychological distress, according to a statewide\u00a0survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

National estimates suggest that 1 in 2 adolescents are affected by a mental<\/p>\n

health disorder, with nearly half of these first appearing before 14 years of age.<\/p>\n

As these numbers rise, youth statewide are not getting the care they need.<\/p>\n

Of the 284,000 youth diagnosed with depression in California, for instance, 66% did not receive treatment during adolescence.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, suicide rates for Californian youth aged 10 to 18 increased 20% between 2019 and 2020.<\/p>\n

The initiative<\/h2>\n

\u201cTo help kids get the help they need \u2014 and to address a nationwide shortage of providers that often cause long wait times \u2014 we\u2019ve launched two mental health apps, BrightLife Kids and Soluna, offering free support to parents, caregivers and kids living in California, regardless of insurance status,\u201d said Autumn Boylan, Deputy Director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships at the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), at a Tuesday, December 10 state-held briefing on the initiative.<\/p>\n

BrightLife Kids<\/a>\u00a0offers free support to families with kids up to age 12 including coaching for sleep issues, anxiety, social skills and family caregiving coordination through live one-on-one video chats, direct messaging and on-demand content.<\/p>\n

Coaches are bilingual in English and Spanish, and caregiver users have access to translation up to over 17 languages.<\/p>\n

For Californians aged 13 to 25,\u00a0Soluna<\/a>\u00a0offers multilingual one-on-one text and video chats with user-selected coaches, with a one-minute average wait time; peer discussion forums; interactive journaling, breathwork, mood log and goal-setting tools; mental health quizzes, videos and articles; health care system navigation support, including dental and vision; and even help in finding other resources like local food banks, housing aid, transportation and even cooling centers.<\/p>\n

The free resources are currently state-funded through June 30, 2027 and available for download on the App Store and Google Play, requiring an in-state zip code for signup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my own child was experiencing mental health challenges, it was tricky navigating a complicated health system alone,\u201d said Boylan. \u201cAnd when we were talking to young people leading up to the launch of these apps, we heard clearly that they don\u2019t necessarily want to talk to a licensed practitioner right away, but to peers and near-peers that can understand their lived experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it made sense to offer upstream, early-intervention support to youth who may not necessarily have a mental health diagnosis, but who need skills to cope with everyday-life stressors and let them know they\u2019re not alone \u2026 which would also take some pressures off understaffed practitioners statewide. Then, for kids who need more support, we connect them to these practitioners through these apps,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Community stories<\/h2>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked with Dr. Diana, a family physician and mother who was completely skeptical about this program, but signed up because her child was dealing with tantrums and aggressive behavior like biting,\u201d said Brando Menjivar, a senior coach for BrightLife Kids. \u201cThrough coaching to support her child, not only did his behavior improve, but so did communication with her husband about their best parenting approach.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more I work with caregivers and kids, the more I realize that sometimes we fight our emotions. The first step is labeling these emotions so we can be aware of them and identify their triggers \u2026 and accept that experiencing, say, grief or stress isn\u2019t bad. It becomes bad when we don\u2019t manage it, and it just sits there and turns into something worse,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

Most standard medical textbooks attribute 50% to 80% of disease to stress-related origins.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe concept I love to teach kids dealing with big emotions is of being the surfer who swims toward the big wave to ride it, rather than swimming away,\u201d Menjivar added. \u201cToward the end of our coaching, Dr. Diana said \u2018Nobody teaches you how to be a parent in med school.\u2019 She had all this physical knowledge, but didn\u2019t know how to connect the dots so she and her child could make space to accept their emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in a pretty traditional Latino household, so mental health was a taboo subject. It was rarely talked about,\u201d said Yasmin, a Soluna coach. \u201cAnd as a teenager, I experienced a lot of traumatic events and felt really alone in my suffering. For the longest time, I just questioned why I was going through it. It wasn\u2019t until I learned about the peer support model in college when it clicked \u2014 all the emotional challenges I went through were so that I could help other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI share my story because it\u2019s one that all our peer support specialists have. We all have lived mental health struggles that fuel us to support other people,\u201d she continued. \u201cAnd our coaching sessions are goal-based, so whether our users want to have 10 sessions, or just come in for one single session, all our coaches have a solution-focused approach to help create actionable steps for change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Describing the need for these services, Moa Kim, a counselor at Koreatown Youth Community Center in Los Angeles, said \u201cI have a Korean American fifth grade student, born and raised in Koreatown, who comes for rehab services, and he and his mom come in for therapy as their relationship has been strained, because they feel like they can\u2019t communicate well with each other, especially when they\u2019re angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s very overworked from her job, and her husband is often unavailable due to his job, and he expects her to be the primary caretaker for their son, so she\u2019s struggling with their child\u2019s emotional outbursts, and then she frequently loses her temper, which only worsens the situation, and she feels too drained to practice peaceful parenting or prioritize self-care,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo her son, who is very sensitive and bright, has turned to gaming as a coping skill. So now, every time he and his mom fight, he shuts himself in his room. And his mom recognizes the need to spend more quality time with her son, but feels too overwhelmed to make those changes,\u201d Kim explained. \u201cWe\u2019ve been providing help and parenting tips, but can only meet them once a week \u2014 so she feels unsupported.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just one example of countless youth and families with similar struggles throughout California that this initiative is going a long way to help,\u201d she added. \u201cTo deal with these mental health issues, kids need help learning to communicate them \u2026 that\u2019s what these apps are here for.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BySelen Ozturk Dec 13, 2024 Children...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local","category-education","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69214,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69213\/revisions\/69214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}