State Office of Children’s Mental Health Confronts Worsening Crisis

Depression. Photo by Ryan Melaugh. (CC BY 2.0)

Hannah Brecke, a youth leader and student at Port Washington High School, said she has dealt with mental health issues for “as long as I can remember,” but her troubles were exacerbated in middle school when her mother was placed in the hospital due to an illness. She said she started attending school less because of her anxiety about her mom, and when her mother passed two weeks later, she didn’t know how to handle it.

“I cried every night for my mom for two years. I wanted to die… I slept all day, didn’t talk to anybody and disappeared from society. I didn’t want to get better. I wanted to suffer like this because if I didn’t, I felt that it meant I didn’t miss and love my mom,” Brecke said.

It wasn’t until her sophomore year, Brecke said, that she realized she “wanted to live” for her mom. It was then she said that she started attending therapy and was prescribed medication to help her with her mental health.

“Even if the meds didn’t help, at least I could say, I was trying. About six months into taking my meds, I began to notice that I wanted to do things more. I wanted to talk to people more,” Brecke said. “My grief will never go away, but at least now it is manageable.”

Brecke and Kayla Winston, a student at Case High School, told their stories of dealing with mental struggles during the Office of Children’s Mental Health (OCMH) annual briefing Friday.

Brecke and Winston are just two Wisconsin youths, who have dealt with mental health struggles in recent years. This year’s annual briefing provided an opportunity to assess 10-year trends in youth mental health and to discuss solutions Wisconsin could try to address ongoing challenges. The Office of Children’s Mental Health was created by 2013 Wisconsin Act 20 and launched its work in early 2014 to help coordinate mental health initiatives across the state and track data about children’s mental health to inform its efforts.

OCMH Director Linda Hall said listening to young people’s stories and their answers about how to address what’s happening with youth mental health is essential for tackling ongoing concerns.

“Our young people are living through so much and it’s very different from the world that most of us grew up in,” Hall said during the briefing.

Amy Marsman, OCMH’s senior research analyst, highlighted a number of concerning trends to notice over the last 10 years. They included a 42% increase in the number of youth reporting symptoms of depression, a 29% increase in those reporting anxiety with two-thirds of female high school students reported having problems, a 21% increase in those reporting self-harm and a 41% increase in those reporting that they’ve considered suicide.

“Sometimes, in an effort to diminish emotional pain, people purposely hurt themselves. It may be cutting, burning or bruising oneself without wanting to die, and these self-harm rates have increased statewide since 2014,” Marsman said.

Other areas of concern highlighted by the report include half of children age 3 to 17 with a mental health condition not receiving treatment; an increase in the number of young adults age 18 to 25 with mental health illnesses; the majority of doctors not asking parents with children age 0 to 5 about learning, development or behavioral problems; a decline in the number of teens with a trusted adult at school and a decline in the number of teens who feel like they belong in school.

Winston of Racine Case High School highlighted some of the ways she was able to find support when she began having mental health problems after starting high school a couple years into the COVID-19 pandemic. She said joining band helped give her a sense of belonging at the school. She said her peers helped support her through some of the struggles that she dealt with and that having a trusted adult in school was also important.

Winston said that she also eventually started therapy to help with her depression.

“I had to do a lot of learning about myself,” Winston said.

Hall highlighted some of the stressors affecting Wisconsin youth, including academic pressures, gun violence, political divisiveness, racism and discrimination and climate change.

The annual briefing highlighted some areas of improvement over the last five years, including that the number of psychiatrists in Wisconsin and the number of school-based mental health professionals have increased.

“Though the number of school-based mental health professionals has increased, totals are still below recommended levels and their services are not reimbursed at sustainable rates,” Marsman said. “Fixing school mental health reimbursement rates is key to addressing Wisconsin’s youth mental health crisis since the majority of Wisconsin kids who receive services get them at school.”

Potential policy solutions

At the briefing, Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston), who chairs the Assembly Children and Families Committee and sits on the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Prevention Committee, along with Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) highlighted several potential policy proposals that could help address ongoing mental health issues among children.

One proposal, which Snyder said he spoke with a pediatric psychologist about, is implementing universal wellness screenings starting at the age of 5. He said a screening could serve as a “great opportunity” to allow young children to speak to someone, and that if they continue until the age of 18, the program could be connected to schools.

“As we’ve seen from the data, a lot of the data points we get come from kids that just go through puberty or in their teens, but what was going on before that? Snyder said.

Snyder added that he is interested in providing more mental health funding for schools as well as investments in adult care.

“If somehow we get the child back on the road to recovery, you don’t want to send them back into an environment that hurts the work you were able to accomplish,” Snyder said.

Snyder and Johnson both discussed creating psychiatric residential treatment facilities — or PRTFs — in Wisconsin. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau has described them as long-term facilities that typically offer treatment for children diagnosed with psychiatric conditions, including bipolar disorder, disruptive behavior disorders, substance use disorders, severe emotional disturbance or post-traumatic stress disorder.

The lawmakers participated in a study committee in 2024 that examined the current state of Wisconsin’s emergency detention and civil commitment laws as they applied to children and came up with some suggestions for improvement. The creation of these facilities was one major point of discussion, along with the issue of youth being sent out of state for treatment.

Wisconsin does have three youth crisis stabilization facilities, but those are short-term facilities with a maximum of eight beds. There are currently no residential psychiatric treatment facilities in the state.

“We need to do better of ensuring that we have these residential treatment centers right here in this state where [youth are] closer to home, they’re closer to their families and once they get out, they can continue that continuum of care without it being piecemealed and in some cases just missed all together,” Johnson said.

Johnson said she also wants to see more mobile crisis response teams across Wisconsin to take some of the burden of dealing with mental health crises off law enforcement.

“Mental health is a crisis, but it’s a crisis that’s too often met with law enforcement — individuals that don’t necessarily have the training to adequately address these issues due to no fault of their own.” Johnson said. “It puts a strain on our police department, but it also teaches our minors that having mental health [struggles] isn’t necessarily in some cases acceptable.”

Johnson said resources for these initiatives need to be statewide and not just concentrated in one part of the state.

“In some cases,…we may do a good job in Milwaukee but not necessarily a good job in the rural areas and our kids matter, no matter where they’re at,” Johnson said.

Ten years after its creation, Office of Children’s Mental Health confronts worsening crisis was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.