Oishei Children’s Hospital Receives Nearly $3 Million

A part of a $15 million investment statewide to help protect and care for the mental health of children and young people from historically underserved populations, Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this week announced a $2.9 million award to Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo to help provide programs to reduce suicide risk in young residents.

The governor’s office singled out efforts by regional organizations that have programs aimed specifically at suicide prevention and at-risk youth.

Oishei Children’s Hospital will use its funding to “implement a new protocol that will expand its prevention efforts to all patients between the ages of 11 and 21 who are screened for suicide, not just those at the highest risk,” the governor’s office says. “The funding will also allow Oishei to expand prevention screening services, making them available at tabling events involving underserved populations.”

The funds will be administered by the state Office of Mental Health and came from the Connecting Youth to Mental Health Supports program to “help develop programs and suicide prevention strategies among racial and ethnic minority populations and LBGTQ+ groups, including those in rural areas.”

“While New York’s suicide prevention efforts are nation-leading, we have seen alarming trends developing among youth and young adults since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago,” Gov. Hochul said. “These awards will help develop innovative and culturally appropriate programs to serve the mental health needs of young New Yorkers - especially those at the center of these tragic trends.

The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey suggests that, nationally, rates of suicide ideation have increased dramatically, with an estimated one-third of teenage girls seriously considering self-harm in 2021, a 19% increase from the previous decade, while three in five admitted to feeling “persistently sad or hopeless,” double the rate of boys at the same age, according to the survey that studied trends among high-school students between 2011 and 2021.