Senator Chris Murphy Joins the Center for Youth Mental Health's Annual Benefit

Back in the Crosby screening room, the conversation unfolded: “These twelve years have been a record of success,” said Dr. Shaffer of the Center, “but also a record of increasing need. And as the youth mental health crisis has grown, it’s really gotten to a point where I almost think that it’s too big for psychiatry alone. It’s something that the country itself has to have a greater perspective in seeing.”

That wider perspective is exactly what Sunday’s conversation aimed to provide. Dr. Shaffer framed the issue clearly: “To what extent do we treat this as a psychiatric problem—something that can be solved by biomedical intervention—and to what extent must we see it as a societal one that demands broader, structural solutions?”

Dr. Gordon, psychiatrist-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who previously served as director of the National Institute of Mental Health, didn’t hesitate: “It’s both.” He explained: “Mental illness is a biological product of a brain gone awry. But we also know the environment interacts with and forms the brain. During the pandemic, for example, children who kept daily schedules—getting up at the same time, eating meals together—saw reduced risk. That’s not about medication or diagnostics. That’s structure. And structure matters.”

Murphy, who has worked to secure federal funding for school-based mental health care, elaborated on the complications that come with trying to legislate for such a complex issue. “We spent a long time in politics making the argument that you shouldn’t think about mental illness any differently than you think about heart disease or a busted knee,” he said. “That was our way of trying to erase stigma.”

Later that evening, guests made their way upstairs for dinner, served atop green linens and dotted with petite potted peonies—a springy touch that felt in synch with the unusually chilly post–Memorial Day weather. Dinner conversations circled back to the Center’s work—programs like LEAP, a group exposure therapy model for emerging adults; outpatient and intensive day treatment options; college readiness therapy; and six-week educational sessions for parents. As Dr. Gordon noted, these programs are only as impactful as their reach. “We are getting better and better at identifying individuals at risk,” he said. “But the challenge now is how to implement those solutions in a system that actually gets them to the kids who need them.”

Murphy called on the broader mental health field to help lawmakers expand that reach. “Yes, you have to deliver the funding. You’ve got to build a consistent and uninterrupted system of care,” he said. “But you also have to get serious about the exposure to violence in our cities. You have to get serious about regulating social media. You have to understand the links between intense poverty and mental illness.”

In short: treating youth mental illness can’t be confined to clinics and classrooms. It requires a culture-wide shift—one that the Center for Youth Mental Health is already helping to lead.

“Mental illness can be a tremendous burden,” Dr. Shaffer said in closing, “but it does not have to limit or shackle people. The work we do at the Center is about creating new models of care—and giving young people the tools they need to build the lives they imagine.”