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Children’s Mental Health Community Speakout

About Our Children’s Mental Health Community Speakout

On November 30th, the Healthy Minds, Healthy Kids Campaign held a Statewide Community Speakout on Children’s Mental Health to mobilize support around our deeply under-resourced mental and behavioral health system.

We brought together advocates, caregivers, youth, service providers and state leaders to call on New York State to make the needed changes and investments that prioritize children, youth and families amid decades of chronic disinvestment in the children’s behavioral health system.

In Our Event Recording, You Will:

  • Learn About the mental health crisis impacting children, youth, and families
  • Meet the Healthy Minds, Healthy Kids campaign organizers, youth and parents like you who are leading this movement
  • Advocate With Us on policies that will address our mental health crisis
  • Take Action by contacting your state leaders

Speakers Include

  • Nura Anwar | Parent, Advocate, and HMHK Youth/Caregiver Council Member
  • Faith Beaty | Parent, Advocate, and HMHK Youth/Caregiver Council Member
  • Tamara Begel | Parent, Advocate, and HMHK Youth/Caregiver Council Member
  • Alice Bufkin | Associate Executive Director for Policy & Advocacy at Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York
  • Preem Cabey | Advocate and HMHK Youth/Caregiver Council Leader
  • Brad Hansen | Public Policy Director at Families Together in New York State
  • Christina Hauptman | Parent, Advocate, and HMHK Youth/Caregiver Council Member
  • Steve Gonyea | Parent, Advocate, and HMHK Youth/Caregiver Council Member
  • John Kastan | Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at The Jewish Board
  • Bethany Morgan | Parent, Advocate, and HMHK Youth/Caregiver Council Member
  • Carlos F. Rosales | Senior Community Engagement Associate at Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York
  • Cathy Salazar | Parent, Advocate, and HMHK Youth/Caregiver Council Member
  • Diane Tanner | Parent, Advocate, and HMHK Youth/Caregiver Council Leader

Learn how you can join our movement as champions fighting to ensure youth and families receive the critical support they need to end our mental health crisis and make a future where children and families can grow and thrive.

RSVP HERE

Why This Matters

For nearly five years our campaign has championed and advocated for the needs of New York’s children, youth and families amid decades of chronic disinvestment in the children’s behavioral health system.

Our coalition must foreground the reality facing tens of thousands of families every day in our state: finding timely mental health supports for children and adolescents is overwhelming, isolating, exhausting, and often impossible.

Too many children in New York are facing unmet needs for mental health services.  Half of youth with major depressive episodes in the past year did not receive treatment, and death by suicide is the third leading cause of death for youth age 15-19 in our state. This crisis was further exacerbated by the many economic and social harms heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Frighteningly, families throughout the state are facing waitlists in the hundreds or more, forced to wait months for services they desperately need today.

It is urgent that children, youth, and families are prioritized in this year’s State Budget to correct a long-standing crisis in part created from the lack of adequate investments in our mental and behavioral health.