Senator Chris Murphy Joins the Center for Youth Mental Health s Annual Benefit
“I’m pretty naturally optimistic; I don’t think you could be in my business without waking up every day and believing that things can get better,” said Senator Chris Murphy on Sunday evening at the Crosby Street Hotel. He was speaking specifically about youth mental health—an issue he’s championed for years—at last night’s The Center for Youth Mental Health at NewYork-Presbyterian annual benefit. The Connecticut senator was joined by Dr. Charlie Shaffer and Dr. Joshua Gordon for a timely conversation about the crisis facing young people today and the role that public policy, clinical care, and community can play in addressing it.
The evening, hosted by Tory Burch, Dr. Zandy Forbes, Chip Kaye, and Anna Wintour, unfolded in three parts—cocktails, a conversation, and dinner—all in support of a Center that has become a national model for innovative, evidence-based youth mental health care. Founded more than a decade ago, the Center—housed within NewYork-Presbyterian and affiliated with psychiatrists at both Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons—has grown in response to an urgent need. One in five adolescents experiences a mental health challenge each year, and suicide remains the leading cause of death for individuals aged 15 to 24. The Center’s mission is not only to treat these conditions but also to help young people thrive.
The room was filled with familiar faces from the fashion and philanthropic spheres. Tory Burch, a longtime supporter of the Center, was joined by designers Emily Adams Bode Aujla and Aaron Singh Aujla, Christopher John Rogers, and Batsheva Hay. Jordan Roth, Allison Sarofim, Indré Rockefeller, and Wendi Murdoch were also in attendance. Young Patrons Committee member Alexander Hankin and Casey Kholberg had flown in from the UK, while Serena Marron made an appearance fresh off her Blackberry Farm wedding weekend.
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.”
Photo: Kate Owen1/16Emily Adams Bode Aujla and Aaron Singh Aujla
Photo: Kate Owen2/16Christopher John Rogers, Christina Ripley
