Funding to Develop Services for Hispanic/Latinx, Black/African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and LGBTQ+ Youth
Prevention Effort Focused on Unique Cultural Factors Putting Historically Underserved, Racial and Ethnic Groups at Heightened Risk
Governor Kathy Hochul announced five conditional awards totaling $15 million over five years to help community-based service providers to develop innovative programs that will help reduce suicide risk among youth from historically underserved populations. Administered by the Office of Mental Health, the state funding through the Connecting Youth to Mental Health Supports program will help develop programs and suicide prevention strategies among racial and ethnic minority populations and LGBTQ+ groups, including those in rural areas.
“While New York’s suicide prevention efforts are nation-leading, we have seen alarming trends developing among youth and young adults since onset of the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago,” Governor Hochul said. “These awards will help develop innovative and culturally appropriate programs to serve the mental health needs of the young New Yorkers – especially those at the center of these tragic trends.”
The awards will develop community-based, treatment-adjacent mental health services aimed at building a sense of safety and connectedness at-risk populations and to establish partnerships to help these individuals access treatment when needed. Grant recipients with their total award amount over five years include:
- Contact Community Services Inc., Onondaga County; $2.9 million
- Child Center of New York, New York City; $3.4 million
- John R. Oishei Children's Hospital of Buffalo, Erie County; $2.9 million
- Access: Supports for Living Inc., Orange County, $2.9 million
- Comunilife Inc., Nassau County, $2.9 million
Contact Community Services will use the funding for its youth suicide prevention program with a focus on Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and LGBTQ+ youth between the ages 12 and 18 in Onondaga County. This program provides culturally responsive and trauma-informed services to marginalized and at-risk youth to promote safety, connectedness, and good mental health to reduce the risk of suicide and establish age-appropriate pathways for intervention.
The Child Center of New York will develop a program to reduce the risk of suicide and build a sense of safety and connectedness for high-risk youth and young adults up to age 24 who are living in Queens and Brooklyn. Specifically, the program will focus on groups more likely to experience post-pandemic poor mental health outcomes, including Black/African Americans, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islanders, and LGBTQ+ youth.
The John R. Oishei Children's Hospital of Buffalo will implement a new protocol that will expand its prevention efforts to all patients between the ages of 11 and 21 who are screened for suicide, not just those at the highest risk. The funding will also allow Oishei to expand prevention screening services, making them available at tabling events involving underserved populations.
Access: Supports for Living Inc. will develop Youth Resilience, Education, and Advocacy for Children’s Health program –also called Youth REACH –to focus primarily on suicide prevention for youth and young adults from historically marginalized or underrepresented communities, with a special focus on LGBTQ+ individuals. Serving both rural and urban communities in Dutchess, Orange, Orange, Rockland, Sullivan, and Ulster counties, this program will provide treatment-adjacent risk assessment and include safety planning and connection to crisis intervention services, screenings, individual and group support services, and peer support services.
Comunilife will expand its ‘Life is Precious’ program to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate suicide prevention activities for at-risk Latina teens between the ages of 12 and 18 and their families in Hempstead and in Nassau County on Long Island. The program will focus on teens enrolled in school and living with depression, suicide ideation or other diagnosed mental illness.
Governor Hochul has made youth mental health a focus of her administration. The FY25 Enacted Budget expands mental health support for children statewide, fulfilling an agenda she outlined in her State of the State address in January.
The Budget provides $20 million in start-up funding for school-based mental health clinics and a rolling application process to expedite these awards, which were previously secured through the state procurement process. An additional $2 million was dedicated to expanding peer-to-peer mental wellness efforts among young people across the state, including training programs like teen Mental Health First Aid.
While the suicide rate in New York State has remained relatively stable since 2012, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey found alarming mental health trends among high school-aged youth between 2011 and 2021 – especially among teen girls. Nearly a third of teen girls seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021, an increase from 19 percent the prior decade; about three in five felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021, which was twice the rate of teen boys and represents a nearly 60 percent increase over the rate recorded in 2011.
This survey also found that youth from marginalized populations are more likely to suffer mental health issues: More than half of LGBTQ+ students expressed having poor mental health, with one in five reporting having attempted suicide in the past year. Suicide attempts were also elevated among Black youth when compared to White youth, according to the report.
The awards build on state efforts to engage at-risk and underserved populations with prevention efforts and mental health supports, including youth and young adults identifying as transgender, gender non-conforming and non-binary and help those questioning or struggling with gender identity. Earlier this year, OMH conditionally awarded a total of $1 million to three service providers through the Connecting Youth to Mental Health Supports-TGNCNB initiative, which is part of the Lorena Borjas Transgender and Non-binary Wellness and Equity Fund and provides funding to support trans-led and staffed community-based services for this underserved population.
Likewise, there have been alarming increases in suicide rates among Black youth. Suicide rates among Black individuals ages 10 to 19 have increased 54 percent since 2018, and faster than all other racial and ethnic groups, according to a report released by the Pew Charitable Trust in April.
The suicide rate among Black youth, ages 10 to 17 rose 144 percent from 2007 to 2020, even though overall youth suicide rates were trending downward. Black adolescents were also significantly less likely than their peers in other demographic groups to receive mental health care, the report found.
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