Cambia Health Foundation granted $194,000 to the Vancouver-based Children’s Center to go toward school-based mental health treatment.
The announcement came Friday during a fundraising luncheon for Children’s Center, a nonprofit mental health provider.
“Youth and children who are facing mental health challenges or crisis will have some place other than the principal’s office to go,” said Angela Hult, the foundation’s executive director.
Two years ago, the Portland-based Cambia supported a similar program in the Tigard-Tualatin (Ore.) School District that proved successful, Hult said. Among students treated, days absent from school went down 29 percent. Office disciplinary referrals decreased 39 percent. Suspensions were reduced by 39 percent while the percentage of students passing all core classes increased 34 percent. The results were even more positive among Latino students, a population the program specifically targeted, Hult said.
She said children who are treated for mental health challenges do better the rest of their lives. Half of all chronic mental illnesses begin by age 14, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. About 900 children and their family members are treated at Children’s Center every month.
Bullying, abuse, poverty and the regional housing crisis can all impact children’s mental health. The vast majority of families served by Children’s Center are low-income.
Using a grant from the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington, Children’s Center began a pilot program at Mountain View High School.
A therapist is finishing up her third year at the school, contacting at-risk students and their families to determine unmet needs. If they had any, they were connected with a mental health resource and other social services.
The program looked at what might be a barrier to school attendance and success, said Helen Sullivan, clinical supervisor at Children’s Center. They also want to increase parental involvement. Children’s Center applied for a Cambia grant to work in more schools within the district and to intercept students before they get to high school.
“We’re extremely excited about being able to take this to a new level,” Sullivan said.
The planned program, called Partnering For Success, would act as a model for other school districts.
Kennedy’s challenges
Former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy spoke at the luncheon at the Heathman Lodge about his work to eliminate the stigma around mental illnesses. The Democrat, who represented Rhode Island in Congress for 16 years until 2011, discussed his own challenges with addiction.
“Our model of dealing with children who have mental health crisis is to discipline them. It’s the same model we have nationally towards anyone dealing with a mental illness or addiction. What do we do? We put them in jail,” said Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.
“I think it’s about time in this nation that we address these issues as the health issues they are, and address them in the health care system and not in the criminal justice system.”
His wife, a public school teacher, told him that her options for dealing with students facing mental health problems are to send them to the principal’s office or detention.
“I want to make sure that my children … get a new model of care, one where they don’t have to be self-conscious about identifying themselves as needing extra services,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy recalled how his family never talked about mental illness, even though members of his family dealt with it. The family “never said a word about my dad suffering from post-traumatic stress because of the violent murder of his brothers. Anyone would have easily seen that he suffered incomprehensible psychological devastation because of that,” Kennedy said.
When Kennedy was two years sober, having wrestled with an addiction to opiates, he injured his finger trying to put together a pinball machine. He went to the emergency room where he was given Band-Aids, gauze and a prescription for a painkiller containing opiates.
“Luckily, my wife had just gotten her mother to look after the kids so she could join me in the ER. She saved my life when she plucked that prescription right out of my hand,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy was the primary sponsor of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. It required insurance carriers to reimburse brain illnesses like they would illnesses of any other part of the body.
He recently met with Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell to stress the importance of not segregating people who have mental illnesses, which are often treated as separate from the management of someone’s overall health.
The work done by Children’s Center is “not simply about helping them become more resilient,” he said. “It’s about helping all of us have those skills that can help us better cope with life’s stresses and challenges. That will make all of us better no matter where we are on the ‘spectrum.’ “
