Kohl's makes donation to bolster mental health care in Wisconsin. Here's how.
A $3 million donation from Kohl's will help Children's Wisconsin open three new mental health walk-in clinics across the state at a time when study after study shows a growing mental health crisis among children and teens.
The clinic locations have yet to be determined, but decisions will be based on community need assessments, existing partnerships, and a facility's readiness to accommodate a clinic, Amy Herbst, the hospital's vice president of mental and behavioral health, said Friday. Children's has clinics across the state, in Eau Claire, Kenosha, Madison, Neenah, Racine, Stevens Point, Madison and Wausau.
Herbst said the hospital is aiming to open the first of its three new clinics by the fall. The remaining two clinics will open in 2024 and 2025.
"This need for emergency mental health care is not unique to Milwaukee," Herbst said. "What you don't find in the continuum of care is this urgent and immediate access to mental health care. There is an unmet need, a gap."
The new locations will offer similar services to those provided at the Craig Yabuki Mental Health Walk-In Clinic on the Children's Wisconsin Milwaukee campus. That means anyone ages 5 to 18 who is experiencing a mental health emergency, as defined by the family, child or teenager, is encouraged to come to a walk-in clinic rather than seeking help at an emergency department.
"We don't want you going to an emergency room unless you have an urgent medical need. We can do better," Herbst said.
In 2022, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation reports were up, with 34% of Wisconsin students feeling sad and hopeless almost daily, a 10% increase over the past decade, according to the Wisconsin Office of Children's Mental Health. In addition, 52% reported anxiety.
"It is the epidemic of this generation," Christie Raymond, Kohl's chief marketing officer, said Friday.
Since 2001, Kohl's Cares, the company's philanthropic arm, has donated $23 million to Children's Wisconsin. In 2019 when Children's Wisconsin announced its $150 million plan to fundamentally rethink and fully integrate mental health care into the medical treatment of every child, Kohl's was among the first to support the effort, giving $5 million that year to the new initiative.
"It is pretty startling when you look at some of the statistics and see how many children are suffering from depression and anxiety. It's hard to know where to go and what to do," Raymond said. "We decided we really wanted to help children and to make as much of an impact as we could."
More: A transformative donation is putting mental health care within reach of more children
Herbst said that $5 million was used to expand school-based mental health services. It also helped the hospital start its system-wide, mental-health screening approach during visits and helped it build a campaign to reduce the stigma around mental health.
"When you're trying to do something new and different, philanthropy helps you get it started," Herbst said.
Jessica Van Egeren is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's enterprise health reporter. She can be reached at jvanegeren@gannett.com. If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "Hopeline" to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Kohl's donates $3 million to Children's Wisconsin for new clinics
