Many Mental Health Issues Start in Early Childhood. This Funder Aims to Help the Youngest Patients

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The pervasiveness of mental health issues across the population, and the importance of providing treatment to people experiencing these conditions, have perhaps never been more prominent in the public health conversation. This is a welcome advance from the many decades when most people were reluctant or embarrassed to address these issues openly. And while care and resources are slowly becoming more common, and stigma surrounding mental health is lifting, one important segment of the population — children — remains particularly underserved.

That’s a serious problem because, unlike major health issues like heart disease or cancer, mental illnesses are not necessarily associated with increased age. In fact, younger people may face an even greater risk than older folks: It's estimated that about 75% of mental health disorders start before age 24, and about 50% begin to develop before age 14. Unfortunately, the healthcare mechanisms and services to identify and treat children experiencing mental health issues are woefully inadequate.

Just-announced moves by the charitable foundation of financial giant Morgan Stanley, which has for several years made children's mental health a focus of its corporate philanthropy, are designed to address these gaps.

Morgan Stanley recently announced a $20 million commitment over the next five years to its Alliance for Children’s Mental Health, the organization it founded in 2020 to improve mental healthcare for children and young people by funding nonprofits working in the space and partnering with key organizations. In addition to the new funding, Morgan Stanley also announced two new member partners of the alliance that bring additional expertise in children's health: the American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents 67,000 pediatricians and pediatric specialists, and Sesame Workshop, the global nonprofit behind the Sesame Street program.

The new funding aims to expand mental healthcare programs and resources into early childhood care, and to strengthen workforce development for professionals who are in a position to address the mental health of young people, targeting kids from preschool through college age.

The partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics aims to leverage those physician-patient opportunities — most young children aren't routinely evaluated by mental health professionals but they are likely to see pediatricians.

“Physicians and pediatricians are well aware of the childhood mental health crisis but they don't necessarily have the background and training to care for these patients,” said Joan Steinberg, president of the Morgan Stanley Foundation and CEO of the Alliance Advisory Board. “There's a dearth of trained psychologists and social workers so doctors can't always refer children to specialists.”

The goal of the latest funding and alliance membership is to give these physicians the training and knowledge to handle some cases and refer the most important cases to mental health specialists. The new initiative funding will specifically target medically underserved communities, said Morgan Stanley.

The expanded partnership will also enable alliance member Sesame Workshop, which for 50 years has built on its mission to help kids thrive, to expand its early childhood mental health initiative with greater focus on early detection and prevention. It will also focus on helping kids and caregivers in marginalized communities across the U.S. The organization will partner with other leading early childhood networks, including Head Start, and family, friend and neighbor (FFN) care providers.

“By reaching kids way younger and detecting problems early, we hope caregivers can stave off longer-term chronic consequences that previously might only be identified in high school and college,” said Steinberg.

The two new members of the Alliance for Children’s Mental Health join existing partners, the Child Mind Institute, Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, The Jed Foundation (JED), Mind HK, NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, Place2Be and The Steve Fund. Morgan Stanley's new $20 million commitment to the alliance brings its total funding for the initiative to $50 million since 2020.

The alliance also operates its Innovation Awards, which provide five annual grants of $100,000 in seed funding to help nonprofits expand promising and effective programs in children's mental health. One 2021 award recipient, for example, the Rural Behavioral Health Institute, built a school-based mental health system that conducts mental health screening and services for kids in rural areas, where mental health resources can be especially scarce. In the years after its receipt of the Innovation Award, the Rural Behavioral Health Institute has raised more than $3.6 million.

During the COVID pandemic, healthcare professionals sharply stepped up warnings about mental health, worried that the anxiety and isolation brought on by the pandemic would worsen already under-recognized and under-treated mental health concerns. These were, in fact, necessary messages that seem to have made it easier for people to feel comfortable discussing such once-taboo mental health topics, and more likely to seek treatment for themselves and their families.

Given the substantial social burden of mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and suicide, many professionals have been calling for greater support from both public and philanthropic sources. But as we have noted several times in Inside Philanthropy, while mental health remains among the nation's most important health concerns, it's among the least supported throughout the sector.

Fortunately, some grantmakers have put mental health on their radars, including Mackenzie Scott, who in 2022 gave $30 million to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Roblox billionaires Jan and David Baszucki, who are leading expansion of funding and research in bipolar disorder. But philanthropic giving is still behind the curve, according to many close observers of the sector, and those organizations that do fund the cause are always calling upon other funders — particularly health funders — to boost giving for mental health.

I wrote recently about some of the colleges and universities that are integrating student mental health more fully into their curricula and everyday life at the institutions. Such programs have been shown not only to address diagnosable mental health disorders, but to help students thrive academically and socially. However, as Morgan Stanley correctly notes, mental health issues manifest long before college, during adolescence and even in the preschool years. There's everything to be gained by identifying those concerns at those early ages and helping more young people lead healthier and happier lives through their school years and into adulthood.