Less than a year after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy took office Public health advisory issued Congressman Jamaal Bowman called attention to the crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection across the country and was urged to call for more funding for the next generation of mental health providers, especially those in underrepresented communities. Stated.
Bowman’s new bill, introduced in the House on Wednesday, would create graduate-level programs in mental health at historically black colleges and universities, minority-serving institutions, and Hispanic-serving institutions. The plan provides grants for expansion and improvement.
The proposal, endorsed by the American Psychological Association, the American Federation of Teachers and other groups, would provide each school with $10,000 per student in the corresponding program.
The bill is co-sponsored by California Democratic Rep. Tony Cárdenas and has more than a dozen other Democratic co-sponsors, all of whom are members of color.
“We have a children’s mental health crisis in our country, and we need more resources to address it,” Bowman, a New York Democrat, said in an interview with ABC News.
“This crisis is disproportionately impacting Black and Latino children, which is why we need to invest in these institutions,” he said.
Bowman said universities have also long grappled with less funding than majority-white schools.
“I want all educational institutions to seriously invest in the mental health of our peers, because I don’t want our kids to suffer, but HBCUs and [minority-serving schools] In comparison, it is an institution that has historically been underfunded,” he said.
“They need an influx of capital because of historic funding shortfalls, so the key is to start there,” he said.
As of 2021, only 8% of psychology jobs in the U.S. will be Hispanic, 5% black, and 3% Asian, disproportionately lower than their share of the population, according to Bowman’s office. That’s what it means.
His bill, the Mental Health Access Act, would hinder quality, culturally sensitive care for marginalized communities because of disparities in the diversity of mental health workers, he says. It addresses obstacles.
At the same time, Black children are “nearly twice as likely to die by suicide as white children,” Surgeon General Murthy said in a public health advisory last year.
Murthy added: “Socioeconomically disadvantaged children and adolescents, for example those who grow up in poverty, are more likely to develop mental health conditions than children of higher socio-economic status. is two to three times higher,” he added.
Federal health officials say Black children are more likely than any other child to lose a parent or caregiver to COVID-19.
Bowman’s direct connection to the issue is direct, he said. When he was a middle school principal in the Bronx, the year before he decided to run for Congress in 2020, he said 17 children died by suicide in his borough.
“Even among Latino students,” he said, “we’ve seen an increase in suicidal thoughts and thoughts among kids.”
Although the fate of Bowman’s bill in the Republican-controlled House is uncertain, he said he feels personally involved in the issue.
“I lived and experienced the crisis in real time,” he said.
