San Francisco Invests in Youth Psychiatric Services

BY MATT NAMY

Late last year, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) awarded a $33.7 million grant to the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) to renovate space at The Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFGH) for new inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care facilities catering to pediatric patients up to 24 years of age.

After DHCS invited funding requests the Department “seized the opportunity given the urgent need in the City for more behavioral health treatment facilities for youth, and particularly for youth who are uninsured or on Medi-Cal,” said Dr. Farah Farahmand, PhD., Director, Children, Youth & Families System of Care at

SFDPH “This unit will be really critical for kids who are on public insurance, or uninsured, or system involved because we are finding that there are very limited resources for those youth to be able to have mental health services.”

United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) statistics indicate that adolescent mental health has worsened over the past two decades, a trend that accelerated since onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.