Catholic Charities of Baltimore won state grants to fight chronic absenteeism in three Maryland public school districts by connecting troubled students with the mental health services they need.
Thrive Behavioral Health won state funding to work with students with severe behavioral issues in five school districts to keep the youths from being removed from school — and the agency said its tactics are working.
Overall, the new statewide youth mental health program that funded those two efforts supported behavioral health services for more than 58,000 students in its first eight months of operations from March through October 2024. Four out of every five of Maryland public schools received aid for mental health services under the state’s effort.
But in a last-minute scramble to balance Maryland’s fiscal 2025 budget, the General Assembly cut this year’s funding for the state’s fledgling youth mental health program from Gov. Wes Moore’s recommended $110 million to $40 million. And with the state’s fiscal problems deepening, Moore is recommending the state allocate $40 million annually through 2030 to a program he once suggested should get $130 million a year starting in fiscal 2026.
Meagan Pantelis, a clinical social worker at Thrive Behavioral Health, said the proposed cuts would decimate services for students that, in many cases, are just getting off the ground.
“Whenever I found out about that proposed cut, the very first thing that came to mind is that Gov. Moore is wanting to balance a budget on the backs of our children,” Pantelis said. “I just find that to be just egregious. I mean, why are our children the population that we are targeting? Why are they not the population that we want to build up and support?”
Moore, however, has stressed the state must act to close a structural $3 billion budget gap driven in part by the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the 10-year, multibillion-dollar education reform plan that created the youth mental health program.
“We only have difficult decisions ahead,” Moore said in his State of the State address in early February. “We must close this $3 billion budget gap.”
The mental health crisis
Among its many reform efforts, the Blueprint established a new agency — the Maryland Consortium on Coordinated Community Supports — to manage the new statewide youth mental health effort. The General Assembly then provided the agency with $119.7 million over two years to set up its operations and then issue its first $111 million in grants in February 2024.
There’s a reason why the General Assembly initially invested so much in youth mental health. During the 2022-23 school year, over a quarter of Maryland high school students reported their mental health was not good at most or all times, according to a Maryland Department of Health survey.
The percentage was only slightly lower for middle school students, with 22% reporting their mental health was not good at most or all times. Even more students in both middle and high school reported feeling sad or hopeless for at least two weeks in the past year.
“We all know generally that there’s a mental health crisis,” said Lorianne Moss, the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission program manager. “So as sort of the preamble to our first call for proposals, we laid out some data.”
That data, from the Centers for Disease Control, showed 40% of high school students experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. Citing such statistics, the consortium urged mental health programs and nonprofits across the state to apply for funds.
Applicants requested a total of $380 million in grants, said Mark Luckner, executive director of the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission, which oversees the consortium. That’s more than three times more than the consortium had to allocate.
Nevertheless, the state funded mental health service providers in every county. The program also allows service providers to offset treatment costs if families do not have access to insurance, or if students have high copays.
While Luckner and Moss praised the achievements from the first round of grants, they declined to comment on its uncertain future.
Preventing suicide
Preventing youth suicide is one of the consortium’s key goals, said Dr. John Campo, director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Sixteen of the consortium’s 129 grants so far focus on suicide prevention.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people ages 10-14 and third for people ages 15-24, according to the most recent CDC data.
“Suicide kills more young people in that age group than cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illnesses, infections of all kinds, meningitis, pneumonia, HIV, COVID — the whole nine yards,” Campo said. “Add them all together, suicide kills more people than all those things combined.”
Campo, who is also vice president of psychiatric services at Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Baltimore facility that specializes in treating people with neurological, developmental and psychological issues, was invited to join the consortium because of his expertise in the field.
Suicide rates among youth and young adults increased 62% nationwide from 2007 to 2021, according to the CDC. Meanwhile in Maryland, the teen suicide rate increased by more than a third from 2014 through 2022.
Campo said the state’s health care system has been ill-equipped to deal with that increase.
“Mental health crisis isn’t a priority in most emergency departments,” Campo said.
Campo is one of the co-chairs of the consortium’s best practices subcommittee, a group that developed a list of evidence-based mental health practices for grantees to implement.
Each program targets a different facet of the mental health crisis. The responses are also tailored to the varying levels of severity of the mental health conditions different age groups experience.
The consortium found through surveys targeted at both students and parents that 90% of students and families were satisfied with the services.
“A lot of these practices have been tested,” Campo said. “If regional organizations adopt them and implement them with fidelity, we really do want to believe that there will be positive outcomes associated with it.”
From the city to the shore
The youth mental health crisis touches all of Maryland, and so does the state’s response — but grants are tailored to the vast differences among Maryland’s urban, suburban and rural communities.
In Baltimore City, the 11 grants the consortium issued take into account a stigma surrounding mental health services, said Jennifer Cox, director of the University of Maryland School Mental Health Program, which received a $970,000 grant to run a number of programs.
“We think in Baltimore City, we have to be a little bit more creative than just saying, ‘Come get help,’ ” Cox said. “We know we have good things to offer, we just need to find a good way to offer it.”
In working with trusted community organizations such as churches and youth centers, the program has been able to reach people who would otherwise not seek out mental health treatment, Cox said.
Services range from in-school counseling from certified clinicians to parent and caregiver education programs.
“We have to invest in it in a significant way now and going forward for the next 30 years because so many of our young people are suffering,” said Britt Patterson, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “As a result, the adults in their lives are also struggling.”
The consortium funded a similar but much larger array of programs in Prince George’s County, which received $24.9 million — the most of any county. The funding will set up a mobile response team to respond to young people experiencing mental health crises while increasing online and in-person counseling and other services.
One of the county’s largest grants, totaling $2.7 million, went to EveryMind, a nonprofit that is vastly expanding its mentoring and therapy offerings as part of what it calls “Project Wellness.” Projects include training sessions for parents and school staff to teach them more about mental health, including how to manage crises.
“This initiative will create a supportive environment where students and families can truly flourish, meeting their mental health needs with compassion, cultural sensitivity and care,” said Patrice Harrell-Carter, director of Project Wellness.
Meanwhile, the state’s efforts on the largely rural Eastern Shore stress increasing access to treatment in a region that’s short of professionals to respond to the youth mental health crisis. According to the October 2024 report, “Investing in Maryland’s Behavioral Health Talent,” Maryland is nearly 50% short of the mental health workers it needs.
“There’s a resounding message of, we just need more,” said Beth Anne Dorman, CEO of For All Seasons, a behavioral health and rape crisis center that received a grant to expand its services in Kent County, the state’s least populous. “We need more.”
Caroline County, where two organizations won grants to expand their mental health services, faces the same situation, said Derek Simmons, the county’s superintendent of schools.
“We are a rural county that is less wealthy than a lot of parts of the state,” said Simmons, co-chair of the consortium’s best practices committee. “So access to behavioral health is near and dear, and a real challenge where I’m at.”
An uncertain future
Yet the state budget crunch looms as a threat to its youth mental health efforts.
If the General Assembly agrees with the funding levels suggested in the governor’s budget, programs that just started last year may have to be eliminated, said Del. Eric Ebersole, a Democrat who represents parts of Baltimore and Howard counties.
“That group worked in good faith to bring providers online,” said Ebersole, a consortium member. “If the government loses them, can you get them back?”
Dan Martin, senior director of public policy at the Mental Health Association of Maryland, said the proposed cut in planned funding comes at a time when youth mental health care is more important than ever.
“At a time when 18% of high school students and 24% of middle school students have seriously considered suicide in the past year, a reduction of this size in school mental health funding could prove disastrous,” Martin said.
If the General Assembly approves Moore’s budget proposal, the grants distributed by the program in fiscal years 2025 and 2026 combined will be cut 28% from the total amount distributed the prior two years.
Asked for comment, Moore’s office stressed the governor’s proposed allocation for fiscal year 2026 and beyond is exactly what the General Assembly approved for 2025.
“Gov. Moore is maintaining the current level of funding for the Maryland Consortium on Coordinated Community Supports,” wrote a spokesperson from the governor’s office. “The Governor strongly supports behavioral health treatment for Maryland’s children, and maintaining current levels of funding during the state’s budget crisis reflects that commitment.”
But the Moore spokesperson’s statement ignored that only a year ago, a Moore budget proposal called for significantly expanding funding for the consortium to $130 million annually from fiscal years 2026 through 2029. Instead, the current proposal allocates $40 million per year through fiscal year 2030.
The Maryland Community Health Resources Commission is urging action to try to persuade the General Assembly to restore funding to a higher level. The organization is circulating a fact sheet with information on the consortium, the work it’s done and what a permanent cut in funding would do to students and schools.
“Use the above information and write an email to your legislators asking them to restore funding to the Community Supports Partnership Fund,” the fact sheet said. “Provide testimony (either written or oral or both) opposing the cut” at General Assembly hearings.
And under the “why is funding needed” section, the sheet reads: “Dramatic worsening of the behavioral health of children and youth over the last decade.”