A Dinner Celebrates 10 Years of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital Youth Anxiety Center

Last night, Anna Wintour, Tory Burch, and Vera Wang hosted an intimate dinner in support of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital Youth Anxiety Center. The unseasonably warm day faded away inside Locanda Verde. Draped in autumnal foliage, the wood-paneled room filled with laughter and the crackle of a fire. 

Industry veterans like Donna Karan and Tamara Mellon mingled with rising fashion stars like Aurora James, Kenneth Nicholson, Anifa Mvuemba, and Mike Eckhaus. Hearty appetizers circulated the crowd of philanthropists (Lisa Maria Falcone, Wendi Murdoch), actors (Adam Pally, Michael Urie), models (Carlotta Kohl, McKenna Hellam), and, of course, the YAC doctors who help patients with anxiety and depression each day.  

After dinner, Wintour stood beside Burch and Wang. The three greeted their guests and toasted to ten years of the Youth Anxiety Center. Since its founding a decade ago, the integrated program has helped address the psychological issues faced by one in five teens and adults between the ages of 16 and 28. The dedicated medical professionals have dealt with even higher demand due to the isolation and turbulence of the past 20 months.

Wintour welcomed two men of great distinction―Dr. Robert Haskell and Congressman Jamie Raskin―to take the stage for a raw, thoughtful, and deeply personal discussion. Haskell is a contributing editor at Vogue as well as a practicing psychiatrist. Raskin serves as the U.S. representative for Maryland’s 8th congressional district. 

Raskin reflected on two compounding tragedies, one private and one public. Days after losing his son to suicide, Raskin was in the capitol during the violent insurrection of January 6. Through the sleepless nights that followed, Raskin wrote a book in order to process the realization of any parent’s greatest fear (the loss of a child) and any public servant’s nightmare (an attack on democracy by a U.S. president). The resulting memoir, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy, comes out on January 4, 2022.

The evening, filled with unflinching conversations, served as a sobering and ultimately hopeful reminder that mental health must be drawn out of the shadow of stigma and into the light.