The need to support youth mental health is seeing more awareness, but not all communities have been given the resources they need to address these issues.
Recent data from the Butte County Department of Public Health shows the suicide rate per capita in the county is elevated to nearly twice that of California overall.
Ge Yang, project manager at the Hmong Cultural Center of Butte County, said around 35 percent of the youths that come to the center have mentioned having intrusive thoughts and trying to harm themselves.
He said Asian youth in the region need more access to culturally appropriate mental health support.
“In our culture, mental health is a taboo topic,” Yang said. “If you're depressed or sad, a lot of times dads will be like ‘get over yourself, you're better than this, don't be so weak, be a man.’”
New opportunity to address the issue
Yang hopes a nearly $900,000 grant that was recently awarded to the center can help address the stigma around seeking help for mental health.
“The majority of it is youth-led, meaning that we hire youth to work part-time after school to run activities such as support circles,” Yang said. “We're here to guide them and kind of give them feedback on how to provide the best resources, the best education, the best details and so forth.”
Yang has been at the center since 2014. He said it provides a safe space for the community’s younger population to be supported in ways that school and home environments might not deliver.
The grant was awarded by the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, a state program aimed at supporting children and families. The funds will be distributed in installments over the next three years, Yang said.
Although the grant won't fund the program indefinitely, he hopes it will open doors to other grants in the future.
“It can catch the eyes of other investors or other partners … that can reinvest in us and have us continue to do the work that we're going to be doing,” Yang said.
Funding comes at difficult time
The center and others like it in Butte County are facing new challenges. Voter approval of Proposition 1 in March means some nonprofits that provide mental health services are at risk of losing funding from the county.
The proposition diverts 30% of the county’s state mental health funding to housing the severely mentally ill — leaving less to spread among existing mental health programs and services.
Yang said staff members at the cultural center were immediately concerned about how much funding the center could lose.
“When we were educated about Prop. 1,” Yang said, “the whole staff was like, ‘wow, so we've been on a roll for 24 years. What's next?’ And I've even had some staff asking me, ‘So when should I start looking for new jobs?’”
Scott Kennelly, Director of Butte County Behavioral Health, told NSPR last month that the passage of Prop.1’s could put services at risk, but most major changes won’t occur for about another two years.
In the meantime, the center has been working with a consultant since January to help find other funding streams.
