APRIL 2022

The Children’s Mental Health Tsunami: 

Can the Workforce Stay Afloat?

by Larke Nahme Huang, Ph.D. 

Annapolis Coalition Board Member

Former, Senior Policy Advisor, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

The mental health crisis for children and adolescents in the U.S. has reached a critical point, presenting challenges not only to families, communities and the mental health care system, but across all child-serving systems, including schools, primary care, child welfare and juvenile justice.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these alarming trends, the pandemic did not cause this crisis in children’s mental health. For decades, we have struggled with an inadequate and fragmented system of services with poor access to care, limited services and poor outcomes.

Recent policy reports clearly underscore the overwhelming mental health problems for youth and the lack of a well-organized system to address prevention and treatment. Now, the critical question is: Is it too little, too late? [Read the full essay by Dr. Nahme Huang here.]

Workforce Strategies for the Crisis in ED Utilization

The Senior Science and Policy Advisor for the Annapolis Coalition, Dr. Michael Hoge, has been focused on the national crisis in child and adolescent mental health. In collaboration with Connecticut colleagues at the Child Health and Development Institute and the Yale School of Medicine, he has authored a new article, Emergency Department Use by Children and Youth with Mental Health Conditions: A Health Equity Agenda. Among a variety of issues, the article addresses the workforce dimensions of this crisis [Read More].

Other workforce development news…

The National Council for Mental Wellbeing, in collaboration with Health Management Associates (HMA), has prepared a series of three issue briefs to offer immediate actions states and others can take to expand current capacity and build a more stable future mental health and substance use treatment workforce.

The first brief (released in January 2022) Behavioral Health Workforce is a National Crisis: Immediate Policy Actions for States, is a summary of the policy, financial and regulatory waiver recommendations. The second brief, Immediate Policy Actions to Address the National Workforce Shortage and Improve Care, (released in March 2022) focuses on clinical care delivery models and digital solutions. The Third brief (yet to be released) will focus on strategies to address diversity, equity and

inclusion in the behavioral health workforce.

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In February 2022, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) released a report on the study of Medicaid rates for behavioral health services compared to physical health services, and for addiction treatment services compared to mental health services. The report includes “recommendations for achieving a living wage for behavioral health care workers and providing more equitable wages between physical and behavioral health care workers.” Read the cover memo and full report.

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Annapolis Coalition’s Senior Science and Policy Advisor Michael Hoge, Ph.D., spoke with Mental Health Weekly in February. He reviewed challenges faced by the behavioral healthcare workforce over the last two decades (since the inception of The Annapolis Coalition) and looked to the future of the workforce. (Read here.)

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Finally, as part of our ongoing efforts to engage at the federal level, The Annapolis Coalition recently had the opportunity to brief SAMSHA and DHHS leadership on behavioral healthcare workforce issues.

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