The Youth Mental Health Academy — One Year Down the Path Toward More Accessible and Equitable Mental Health Care

The Youth Mental Health Academy is a 14-month program that delivers knowledge and experience to teens from structurally marginalized California communities through paid training, paid summer internships, and year-round support from mentors working in the industry. The program’s goal is to increase representation in the mental health field amongst groups who have historically lacked access to mental health care services — including young people of color, LGBTQIA+ youth, and those who have experienced foster care, the juvenile justice system, homelessness, or poverty. It also aims to cultivate a future generation of diverse and culturally sensitive mental health care providers.

YMHA was first piloted in Los Angeles in 2023 with a 160-student cohort. One participant from that cohort spoke with Jocelyn Meza, PhD, Director of the Youth Mental Health Academy Evaluation Core. They said, “Thank you again for taking the time to speak with my mom and I regarding the program and your experiences with being a Latina in the field of psychology. Our conversation inspired me to take charge of both my college and career path, and I have decided I want to become a school psychologist for a high school.”

Representation matters in all areas of our field. And this student’s comment demonstrates the positive impact this program can have on our youth, leading to the rise in diversity among child mental health professionals and more equitable mental health care for all communities.

Throughout late 2023 and early 2024, the YMHA team began forming key partnerships to facilitate program expansion into the San Francisco and San Diego metro areas for its 2024-2025 program. One such partnership is with Bring Change to Mind (BC2M), a national non-profit that operates peer-led mental health clubs in high schools in 42 states across the US, including California. This partnership supported the expansion of both organizations, with BC2M California members having the opportunity to apply for the YMHA and the YMHA team committing to opening 21 new BC2M clubs in Southern California.

This strategy paid off. In spring 2024, ahead of the program’s official launch, we received almost 1,400 completed applications from students across the state of California. And on June 24, 2024, the 2024-2025 Youth Mental Health Academy cohort of over 900 talented and culturally diverse students officially began the program! This year, we also welcomed 165 mentors to our 39 classrooms at the 19 different site locations across the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

In the last week of July, students completed the first leg of their YMHA journey by wrapping up the 5-week summer academy, which included hands-on learning experiences such as capstone projects. During the final week of the academy, students presented those capstone projects to their peers, mentors, instructors, and families. Projects covered a range of topics including the impact of social media, generational trauma, various mental health conditions, and the effects of stigma and bias on mental health.

In August, YMHA participants and staff reviewed the capstone projects and selected those they would like to award with special recognition. View the 2024 winning groups and their projects. 

Diya Kulkarni commented on their experience with the Summer Academy, saying, “I am a rising senior at Dublin High School and have been part of multiple programs throughout my high school years, but this is the first [program] that genuinely helped me on my journey to become a clinical psychologist. This program allowed me to not only learn about various mental health disorders but also to speak to professionals in various fields of psychology and research.”

But the YMHA journey is far from over for students like Diya. Students will continue to participate in mentorship, workshops, and networking opportunities throughout the coming school year, before completing a paid internship next summer.

125 of the 160 students who began the 2023-2024 pilot program last summer participated in paid internships this summer, completing the final leg of the program. Over the course of their summer internships, they gained real-world experience working with community-based organizations and research institutions. And in mid-August, those 125 high school students became the first class of graduates from the 14-month program, marking an important milestone for the Youth Mental Health Academy. The skills the graduates have acquired throughout the program will not only set them up to pursue degrees in the mental health field, but also equip them with the tools necessary to become mental health advocates within their communities. The graduation ceremony, covered by local Spanish-language news channel Univision 34 Los Angeles, celebrated the students’ achievements and highlighted their potential as the future leaders of mental healthcare.

As with all Child Mind Institute Science programs, the Youth Mental Health Academy has a research component, and that sets it apart from other career development programs for teens. Participants consent to taking surveys about their experiences in the program and having that data used for research purposes. That feedback loop from both students and their families fuels validation studies for the program’s curriculum and has led to two presentations at the “Association for Psychological Science” conference in San Francisco in May of this year.

The poster that was presented, Feasibility and Acceptability of the Youth Mental Health Academy in Structurally Marginalized High School Students, focused on the implementation of our five-week YMHA summer academy and included the entire team as coauthors. Jocelyn Meza, PhD, also gave a flash talk titled, “Increasing Critical Consciousness in Structurally Marginalized Adolescents Interested in Pursuing Mental Health Careers”, which discussed the summer academy’s impact on students’ career choices. Research findings tied to the program will not only lead to future improvements in this program, but can also spark the creation of other programs that will help increase mental health equity and diversity in our communities.