MaineHealth to launch new youth mental health project

PORTLAND – MaineHealth is using a $1.6 million donation to launch a new initiative geared toward addressing what the health care provider calls a crisis in youth mental health.

MaineHealth announced last week that entrepreneur and activist David Evans Shaw made the donation to create the SHAW Challenge, a four-year initiative that allows MaineHealt to work with seven different school districts. 

Dr. Dora Mills, chief health improvement officer at MaineHealth, said she hopes to add more districts.

“We want badly to expand this,” she said. 

The initiative, set to launch in January 2026, will create after-school programs where none exist, and help to integrate those programs with existing efforts inside the districts to address mental health issues among Maine’s youth.

Mills said examples of such programs include Sources of Strength, which works to build constructive social groups among students, and Mental Health First Aid, which teaches students and faculty how to identify students who may be headed for a crisis, and what to do about it.

“These are programs that are meant to really strengthen our community resilience,” she said.

The initiative currently works with seven school districts, including Wiscasset, RSU 20 in Searsport, Brunswick, MSAD 17 in Oxford Hills, RSU 73 in Spruce Mountain, Sanford and Biddeford. 

MaineHealth will also be partnering with other nonprofits throughout the state, including professional soccer club Hearts of Pine, which uses soccer skills in an after-school program focused on youth leadership.

The most recent data from the Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey, recorded this year, shows mental health problems among youth are widespread. 

According to the data, nearly a third of high school students surveyed said they felt and “sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row,” to the point where they stopped doing other activities. The same survey found nearly 13% of high schoolers “seriously” considered attempting suicide within the past year. Among middle schoolers, more than 18% surveyed said they had considered suicide.

Mills added that the number of emergency room visits to MaineHealth hospitals related to suicide has gone up “tremendously” in the past few years. 

“We know that the overall mental and emotional health of our youth is not as good as it used to be.”

The initiative will be funded for the next four years, but Mills said she suspects it will not end there.

“We believe the way that we’re implementing it, it will be sustainable over time,” she said.