The chance to thrive: Blue Cross NC is committed to improving mental health among young people

Earlier this year, the 2024 World Happiness Report (PDF) was issued. This is a publication supported by organizations like Gallup and the University of Oxford. In the report, for the first time, the United States dropped out of the top 20 for the world’s happiest countries. Digging a little deeper in the report, the group with the most significant drop for the US was young people. 

One of the report’s editors, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Center, said in a Washington Post interview, “… the report’s findings show that in North America, and the US in particular, youth now start lower than the adults in terms of well-being. And that’s very disconcerting, because essentially it means that they’re at the level of their midlife crisis today and obviously begs the question of what’s next for them?”

Sit with that for a minute. Our youth, the young people that comprise the next generation of our country, are experiencing their midlife crisis right now. 

The question that comes next is, why? And if you read the report more deeply, several reasons are mentioned: social media use, lack of connectedness, isolation, the polarization of our country, and the deterioration of community. 

Between 2021-23, leaders from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Blue Cross NC) embarked on our Extra Miles Tour, which gave us the opportunity to sit down with community leaders in all 100 North Carolina counties to understand the challenges they face. We heard many things and learned that each community in North Carolina has its own set of challenges and opportunities. But there was 1 consistent theme we heard in almost every stop on our tour. Leaders of these communities would lean in and say, “Our youth are lost.” 

At first, we were unsure what this meant. But as we continued to hear these words, we began to probe. Communities see their youth struggling. We heard over and over that many young North Carolinians lack a sense of direction and don’t feel connected to their peers and families. These struggles can lead to substance use disorders and a range of psychological conditions that threaten to send a young person’s life off-course. According to the North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM) (PDF), 2 of every 10 high school students in our state considered suicide in 2021, with more than 4 in 10 reporting they feel hopeless or sad every single day.

And yet for many in our state who need help dealing with mental health issues, there is simply nowhere to go for treatment. More than two-thirds of the 100 counties we visited on the Extra Miles Tour don’t have a single child or adolescent psychiatrist. NCIOM reports that 1 in 10 children in North Carolina has a mental health diagnosis; how many more would there be if there were a licensed psychiatrist in every county to make this diagnosis?

In response to these urgent calls from our communities, today Blue Cross NC announces an expansion of our commitment to help young people and their families get the support they need to improve their mental well-being and build a foundation that prepares them to thrive.   

If I learned anything on the Extra Miles Tour, it was this: The people of North Carolina are not waiting. It’s inspiring to see how communities get to the work. They try things. They ask each other for help, and when something doesn’t work, they stop it and try something else. At Blue Cross NC, our job is not to get in the way, it’s to add-to, support, and take our lead from the communities we serve. 

We heard inspiring stories of communities coming together to solve problems, with younger people taking active roles in creating strategies and programs to build a better future for themselves and those who follow behind them. This work is personal. It’s heavy. But it’s necessary. Communities are meeting this moment, and Blue Cross NC is committed to supporting them.  

As the state’s largest homegrown, mission-driven, not-for-profit health insurer – and the only insurer with 90 years of North Carolina claims data and the only insurer to tour the state on a fact-finding mission – we are in a unique position to launch new initiatives and convene community collaborations; to dig into what is driving the lack of purpose, hopelessness, and connectedness; and be champions for better access to youth mental health care. Our goal is to listen to our state’s youth, to collaborate with them, and to make it easier for young people and their families to access mental health care and address struggles before they become crises. 

This work is generational. The challenges our youth face cannot be solved in a year, or even 2. This will take time, and it will take all of us. But we must start. 

As a first step, Blue Cross NC will launch a series of initiatives in the coming months:   

• Offering Behavioral Health Rapid Response to make on-demand mental health services available to all Blue Cross NC members. 
• Bringing school-based mental health counselors into our statewide network. This builds on our broader commitment to welcoming nearly 7,000 additional mental health care providers to our network over the past 2 years. 
• Expanding Youth Mental Health First Aid Training for 3,700 community leaders, along with 10% of our own workforce. The training will help participants recognize signs of crisis in young people, help them steer youths to available resources, and ultimately reduce the stigma attached to seeking mental health aid. In addition, our Blue Corps employee volunteer campaign will support community agencies in this effort. 

Beyond addressing the immediate need for expanded access to quality mental health care for young people, we must also get to the root of the crisis. What are the factors causing this increase in demand for youth mental health services? How can we all work together to confront manageable problems early on, before those problems spiral into much more serious episodes? If you’re reading this, and you or your organization would like to join us in exploring and answering these questions, we invite you to reach out. It will take all of us. 

As a mother of 2 teenagers and someone who lost a loved one to addiction, this issue is personal for me. As a native North Carolinian, and leader at Blue Cross NC, it’s an area where I see an opportunity to drive meaningful, generational change.  

With input from all 100 counties of North Carolina, Blue Cross NC has an ambitious to-do list to make our state a healthier place to live for all of us. We invite you to join us as we roll up our sleeves and get to work. Working together, there is no challenge we can’t overcome. Our youth deserve a better future than many of them can envision right now. It’s up to us to help them thrive.