Today’s youth face a wide range of mental health stressors, from emerging technologies to socioeconomic shifts, loneliness, and a lack of purpose. According to data from Mental Health America, 1 in 5 youth experienced a major depressive episode in 2024, and nearly 3 million did not receive treatment. Furthermore, suicide remained the second-leading cause of death for children and young adults last year.
While there is growing awareness and discussion around mental health challenges, the issue remains vastly underfunded, and we believe that the corporate sector has a critical role to play. Many children and families lack access to mental healthcare, and demand is at an all-time high, especially in underserved communities. Continuing to make progress in supporting today’s youth will require increased investment to understand the challenges they face and scale solutions that work for them.
Launched in early 2020, the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children’s Mental Health (the “Alliance”) brings together leading nonprofits to address the youth mental health crisis. With a $50 million commitment, we support our Alliance members in scaling effective mental health programming and have helped reach over 52 million children, caregivers and educators to date. The Alliance’s work also includes our Innovation Awards program which helps early-stage nonprofits accelerate mental health solutions, as well as efforts to drive topical research, raise public awareness, and engage employees. But our work is far from done.
The youth mental health crisis is too large for any organization to tackle alone. Driving meaningful change for today’s youth will require organizations to build collaborative partnerships. The Alliance is rooted in that principle, and we will continue in partnership to address important issues and deliver positive outcomes for youth mental health. It is also crucial that organizations engage in more urgent action across the public, private and nonprofit sectors to help address the immense needs of today’s youth.
I invite and encourage my fellow corporate funders to join the effort to address the substantial funding gap in this space—and to advocate for the mental well-being of millions of children and youth. For Morgan Stanley, the Alliance helps further our Foundation’s mission to give children the healthy start they need in life to succeed. For other companies, there are so many potential intersections with youth mental health – such as physical health, education, career guidance and training and life development – that can align with their own philanthropic priorities. Together, we can deliver solutions that drive meaningful results for our children and young adults, today and into the future.