Dr. Ruth Gerson, our Senior Vice President for Mental Health Services, was recently featured in an article focusing on the heightened need for mental health support for young people. A new Columbia University study reports that in 2020, nearly one in five Americans between the ages of 12 and 25 were affected by depression.

“What we saw for a long time leading up to the pandemic and subsequently since is an increase in kids ending up in emergency rooms for mental health concerns because they don’t have anywhere else to go,” she says.

Read more at Gothamist

In an article in the latest edition of Social Work Today, Shannon Ghramm-Smith, our Senior Vice President of our Child Welfare & Behavioral Health Division, draws on her experience at The Foundling to discuss the benefits and challenges of integrated care. This is where medical and behavioral health providers collaborate to provide holistic, wrap-around services. “Having interrelated services easily accessible in one location or being able to do warm handoffs to a care team member from the same agency allows the client to focus more on what they need—and on building a relationship with the provider—instead of focusing on finding the services they need, referral forms, eligibility, and scheduling,” she says.

Read more at Social Work Today