The Maryland Department of Health is developing a new Children’s Behavioral Health Roadmap to improve policies and implement actionable steps to improve the mental health of youth across the state.
“We are making important improvements, including investing in crisis response services for young people and partnering with our sister agencies on new school-based initiatives,” Maryland’s health secretary said. Dr. Laura Herrera Scott. “We also know that significant disparities remain and that not all children and young people have access to care when they need it.”
MDH will partner with Maryland Family Coalition, the state’s leading organization helping families and youth understand the behavioral health system, and Manatt Health, a policy and strategy firm that recently completed a national plan to address the youth behavioral health crisis.
The two organisations will work together to undertake initial mental health assessments of children in the state.
They will then develop an initial set of recommendations by the end of the year, providing a detailed map of proposed policy changes and steps to improve behavioral health.
Maryland, like many states across the country, is seeing worrying trends when it comes to children’s mental health.
Nearly one-third of all Maryland students reported feeling hopeless or sad during 2021-2022, according to MDH’s most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
LGBTQ+ students report that they often feel uneasy talking to adults about their issues: About 68% said they sometimes, rarely, or never felt able to talk to adults about their feelings, compared to 54% of heterosexual students.
Nationwide, 29% of male students and 57% of female students report feeling sad, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
