Hundreds tell Connecticut lawmakers of need to repair ‘gaps in our shredded safety net’ for children’s mental health

José Sarmiento was only a few months into high school when he learned that one of his friends had died by suicide. In the wake of that tragedy, it felt as though there were few people to turn to — and available mental health resources seemed inadequate, he said.

“I showed up at school one morning and my friend was dead,” he told Connecticut state legislators Friday during a public hearing on the mental health of children and adolescents. “That’s how I learned how this issue works: there’s no take-backs, there’s no easy way to get rid of that pain by yourself, there’s no way to reverse time and change the outcome, there’s no definitive solution — just guilt, and a cafeteria full of 14-year-olds crying because their friend was gone.”

Now a first-year student at Yale University, Sarmiento said he has come to recognize that preventative measures can be taken to address anxiety and depression, and praised two legislative proposals under consideration by lawmakers to expand support for young residents’ mental health.

The all-day joint public hearing of the the Public Health and Children’s Committees of the General Assembly drew more than 200 speakers, including health care providers, agency officials, state politicians, parents and students who offered responses to Senate Bill No. 2, which aims to expand preschool and behavioral health services for children, and House Bill 5001, which focuses on workforce and insurance issues.

Passing legislation to support children’s mental health is a top priority, state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, a Westport Democrat, said, emphasizing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and “the various gaps in our shredded safety net,” which focuses on workforce and insurance issues.

Lawmakers hope the two bills will significantly bolster the state’s support system for children. Senate Bill No. 2 would increase funding for the Office of Early Childhood and the Care4Kids program serving low- to moderate-income families, as well as expand preschool and behavioral health services for children. House Bill 5001, meanwhile, would offer licensure reciprocity for out-of-state mental health processionals, staff mental health clinicians in school settings and eliminate prior authorization for in-patient care, among other initiatives.

The tragic depths of the state’s mental health crisis gave the hearing a jagged edge.

Child Advocate Sarah Eagan noted that in the past year, she has seen has seen more deaths by suicide of children in Connecticut — 14 in total, including some as young as 11 — than at any point in her nine years in the position.

David Johnson, a licensed clinical psychologist, longtime faculty member of the Yale School of Medicine and co-director of Post Traumatic Stress Center, spoke in strong support of the two bills. He emphasized that the mental health needs of young people, which were high before the COVID-19 pandemic, have increased .

Surveys of thousands of public school students in the New Haven area over the past decade, conducted by Johnson’s teams, have returned “alarming” results, he said: 43% reported recent depression, 40% had experienced severe anxiety, 35% had experienced hopelessness and 58% said they could not concentrate on their school studies. Early results from surveys conducted over the course of the pandemic found that those rates have increased by another 25%, he said.

“No longer are mental health needs contained in just 5 or 10% of the student population, where individual counseling or therapy could address the problem,” he said. “With 30 or 40 or 50% of children requiring some degree of support, we need to provide a comprehensive public health approach.”

Connecticut hospitals continue to see high levels of children seeking behavioral health care, Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani told the joint committees. Over the last week there have been about 30 to 35 children ages 13 to 17 waiting for inpatient beds in Connecticut hospitals, though most days, only three or four beds have been available.

Juthani noted that demand for behavioral health care among children tends to surge in October and March and ebb during holiday periods, when there are often no waiting times for inpatient beds.

State Sen. Heather Somers, a Groton Republican, said that in her region, there is often little availability for placement in mental health care, which forces families to go out-of-state to obtain care.

“Many of the people in my district...have really suffered, in the fact that there is no access to health care for mental health issues in children, and therefore the child ends up in the emergency room” she said.

A number of child care providers highlighted the challenges faces early childhood centers, an issue which Senate Bill. No. 2 attempts to address.

Marc Jaffe, the CEO of Children’s Learning Centers of Fairfield County — a program serving more than 900 children ages 0 to 5 — said that the early childhood care industry is “on the verge of collapsing” and urged state lawmakers to direct additional resources toward keeping them afloat.

State Sen. Saud Anwar, a South Windsor Democrat and co-chair of the Children’s Committee, responded that lawmakers hoped to develop emergency grants for child care centers, to prop up an industry “truly at the brink of a collapse.”

Other speakers called attention to areas of improvement within the proposed bills.

Mayor Luke Bronin of Hartford noted that the bills’ focus on school-based mental health care risked ignoring youth in Connecticut who are not connected to schools, particularly those involved the justice system, many of whom have unmet behavioral health needs.

Bronin urged state lawmakers to “resource a much stronger effort” to expand mental health support systems in youth detention centers, including Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire and York Correctional Institution in Niantic, as well as to find ways to continue providing care to youth who leave such centers.

Thomas Burr, the community and affiliate relations manager for the Connecticut branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, proposed a number of measures to add to House Bill 5001, including instituting annual wellbeing checks for K-12 students and staff and offering suicide prevention programs in school settings.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a mental health system that was stretched to its breaking point here in Connecticut, and broke it,” he said. “It is important to recognize we arrived at this point because Connecticut lacks a vision and long-term comprehensive plan for the mental health of our residents.”

Eliza Fawcett can be reached at elfawcett@courant.com.