Cunningham, ICI Staff Spotlight Urgent Mental Health Needs

ICI staff were among those who spoke at the College of Education and Human Development Policy Breakfast Series on January 7, 2025. Jessica Simacek, director of the ICI-led TeleOutreach Center, sits on the extreme left. ICI’s Rachel Freeman is third from the left. Amy Esler, a professor in the University’s Department of Pediatrics who also works in the TeleOutreach Center, is second from the right.

University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham, along with researchers from the Institute on Community Integration and others, last week called on statewide health and education leaders to address critical service gaps in the mental and behavioral health of children and youth.

Welcoming attendees to her first College of Education and Human Development Policy Breakfast Series event, Cunningham urged them to use evidence-based research to address crisis-level service shortages and the increasing practice of housing mental health patients in hospital emergency rooms.

Drawing on a nearly 40-year history of research and advocacy for the rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live in their communities instead of being segregated in institutions, ICI researchers speaking at the popular CEHD event engaged with local educational leaders and mental health experts, with a goal of turning recent findings on youth mental health into actionable public policy.

“That’s really both the joy and wonder of what a great research university can do in a state for communities,” said Cunningham, who spent much of her early career as a public health researcher focused on youth mental health. She called on the group to “envision a future where children receive mental health care they need, when and where they need it.”

Jessica Simacek, director of the ICI-led TeleOutreach Center, led a panel discussion about resolving the dire shortage of mental health providers and appropriate care settings, which has resulted in children and youth boarding in windowless hospital emergency rooms, sometimes for weeks at a time, with little or no access to appropriate mental health care. The TeleOutreach Center is part of the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain , a collaboration of the University of Minnesota Medical School and the College of Education and Human Development. Working with the U.S. Department of Defense Center for Deployment Psychology, the TeleOutreach Center is developing multiple mental health provider platforms in Greater Minnesota.

Panel members at the policy breakfast discussed the escalating numbers of youth boarding in emergency rooms, along with rising incidence levels of mental, developmental, and behavioral conditions that impair students’ well-being and school performance.

Using telehealth and other remote options for increasing access to providers and to training and education for providers is one promising solution, Simacek noted. Others include integrating mental health services into pediatric primary care and school-based intervention models, along with providing care navigation services.

Drawing on learnings from a report prepared last fall for the Minnesota Department of Human Services , ICI’s Rachel Freeman discussed the need to specifically address safety issues for mental health patients, particularly those from historically marginalized racial, ethnic, and cultural communities.

“Families are saying they are struggling, and they often feel blamed if their children are in the hospital” for mental health concerns, said Freeman, director of state initiatives at the Institute. Without adequate support services throughout the community, she said, many of these children aren’t safe in hospital emergency rooms, or anywhere.

Resolving the persistent lack of funding for an appropriate level of providers and services underlies all of these concerns, panelists said.

“Throughout the levels of care, we don’t have adequate reimbursements. Medicaid and private insurance never fully cover the cost of care, and we can’t expect providers to spring up and provide care without reimbursement,” said Amy Esler, a professor in the University’s Department of Pediatrics.

Failing to provide access to basic, initial mental health interventions creates the pathway toward boarding mental health patients in emergency rooms, said Kirsten Anderson, executive director of AspireMN, a Saint Paul membership organization of mental health and other service providers.

“If we had a similar crisis in access to diabetes care or cancer treatment, we would be up in arms,” she said.

Other panelists at the McNamara Alumni Center event included Faith Miller, associate professor of school psychology in the University’s Department of Educational Psychology; and Danelle Dunphy, adjunct professor in the Department of Social Work, an ICI consultant, and a therapist at Behavioral Services, Inc.