As our YCSC community returns from the university’s winter recess each year, I provide updates on the “state of the department” in early January as part of our grand rounds. At this year’s talk, I touched upon several ways in which our department is highly respected for our contributions in research, training, and clinical work. In line with those updates, some highlights of this work and a sampling of achievements from this past year—including an impressive number of publications from our faculty—are included in this special “year in review” newsletter, along with a summary of our strategic priorities as a department and a brief look at some of our initiatives planned for 2026.
As I shared in the opening grand rounds session on January 6, our fiscal year has shown progress, with reduced clinical deficits and increased productivity. However, there are several challenges that lie ahead, some of which go beyond finances alone. Forecasting shows a predicted 25% increase in the need for behavioral health services for children and adolescents and a 34% increase in days of hospitalization devoted to child behavioral health by 2035. We are already taking significant steps to address this increase, such as establishing an urgent care/crisis intervention center. Recognizing that one factor in the increase in mental health needs is the impact of social media on youth development, we are also initiating a clinical research program to understand how social media impacts mental health and how we can best help young people navigate our increasingly virtual world.
We also continue to offer unique and valuable services to families; we have improved our NIH funding ranking, reflecting our robust research capabilities; and the center is also a place where new professionals want to train. To enhance our departmental research infrastructure, we continue to work closely with our colleagues at Yale New Haven Children's Hospital, and we offer many educational and professional development opportunities. In that vein, we are working to develop a single brand under one umbrella, which we are initially referring to as a “professional development academy,” through which we will be expanding offerings and planning for the launch of new initiatives over this next year.
As part of our strategies for the future, we are considering new models to support and sustain behavioral health services and considering the potential impact of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence on service delivery. In addition, we aim to foster new research opportunities to better understand what works for whom and advance the field. Indeed, there are many threads and a great deal of work happening across our missions—and I am, as ever, thankful for the contributions of our supporters and for the extraordinary efforts of our faculty, staff, and trainees. It is truly remarkable what we have accomplished together this past year, and I look forward to what we will achieve in the year ahead.
Linda Mayes, MD
Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology; Chair
Yale Child Study Center