A four-year, $4 million UnitedHealth Group grant is helping UC San Diego expand the state’s mental health workforce with a focus on inclusivity and diversity.

With the grant, UC San Diego School of Medicine has launched the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Inclusive Excellence program (CAPIE), an innovative approach to building a more diverse child and adolescent psychiatry workforce.

The CAPIE program offers novel learning opportunities, individualized mentorship, pre-clinical courses, and financial support for participating medical students.

Yusra Benhalim, M.D., senior national medical director with Optum Behavioral Solutions, who works to provide effective solutions in the child and adolescent psychiatry field, talked about what the grant will allow UC San Diego to do.

“The intention for it was to enable the launch of the CAPIE program, which is not only an investment in the expansion of the mental health worker field itself but also focuses on inclusivity and diversity, hopefully getting a workforce better representative of the communities served,” said Benhalim. “This program is focused on helping students learn more about the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, and getting them connected with opportunities to get mentorships from those who are working in the field, and really understand what a child and adolescent psychologist does.”

Based on a survey conducted by UC San Diego, 87% of all students who engaged with the CAPIE program were more likely to pursue child and adolescent psychiatry as their medical specialty. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 1 out of 5 children experience a mental illness in any given year. However, only half of children and adolescents with diagnosable mental health problems receive the treatment they need.

According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, California has a mental health worker shortage projected to worsen unless meaningful action is taken to address the problem. Benhalim noted becoming a child and adolescent psychologist is a “long haul,” taking 10 years after college including medical school and an adult psychiatry residency program before someone can become a practitioner.

“Those extra years of training are essential to understand the mental health symptoms affecting young people, who can be super emotional when it comes to their mental health and well-being,” said Benhalim. “We learn to work with both the children as well as their families.”

Benhalim has first-hand experience with the impact of social inequities in child and adolescent psychiatry, citing an example. “If a parent loses their home, now their child is at-risk for experiencing homelessness,” she said. “So it becomes even more important for us to think about what wrap-around services we can provide to those families.”

Meanwhile, the need for trained mental-health practitioners continues to grow. “Across the country for the past several years, we’ve seen a huge surge in the needs of adults and youth when it comes to mental and emotional health treatment and support, particularly youth who are more prone to anxiety and depression,” said Benhalim. “With the impact of COVID and all the other changes and challenges we’ve seen, more and more young people, who are at the mercy of those around them, are reaching out signaling they are struggling more.”

Concluded Benhalim: “When we think about mental healthcare, it is essential to think about expanding the workforce. And there are some mental health ‘deserts’ where people just don’t have access to mental health care at all. We need to be able to reach out to support those people earlier, rather than wait for their problems to become more severe and end up requiring a higher level of care. I’m excited about the possibility of making more and more people pivot toward child and adolescent psychiatry as their field of medicine.”