Originally published in the NH Business Review on October 23, 2026.
The nation-wide youth mental health crisis has seen marked improvements in New Hampshire since 2021, but the problem is still far from fixed. Indeed, while the measured outcomes are getting better compared to the worst years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the figures today are still historically concerning compared to a decade ago. Getting past the height of COVID has been an important factor in the improvement of youth mental health, but intensive efforts in New Hampshire to build out high-quality mental health services for youth have also contributed to better outcomes. The challenge remains large, but our success inspires us to press forward. We believe that sustained investment and implementation of evidence-based practices will bring New Hampshire out of this crisis.
The most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey showed that the share of students in New Hampshire feeling persistently sad and hopeless decreased to about 34% from a peak of 44% in 2021. Commenting on the improvement, NH Department of Health and Human Service (DHHS) Commissioner Lori Weaver said, “this progress shows that when services and supports are accessible, our youth can experience better outcomes.”
While acknowledging that there is still a long way to go, we at Dartmouth Health are delighted at the progress, and we urge the state to continue building upon that important work. Thankfully, there is an opportunity to expand access to those services and supports. Social media giant Meta Platforms recently agreed to a landmark $18 billion settlement and promised to implement safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook. Of that, the state of New Hampshire is set to receive up to $224 million over 10 years.
Like DHHS and our community mental health colleagues, Dartmouth Health has been putting its shoulders to the wheel to improve the lives of young people. Two years ago, we offered no inpatient psychiatric care for children or adolescents. Now, we provide all the inpatient child and adolescent psychiatric care available in New Hampshire. Here are just a few examples of the work Dartmouth Health is doing to support youth mental health:
• Dartmouth Health Children’s leases Hampstead Hospital, a 65-bed inpatient psychiatric hospital, from the state to provide treatment for youth. From July 1, 2024, through August 2026, Hampstead Hospital cared for 1,886 young people.
• We created a six-bed Adolescent Medical Psychiatry unit at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) that offers a critically needed and scarce level of care for adolescents whose serious psychiatric illness occurs alongside complex medical conditions. Since opening in April 2025, the DHMC Adolescent Medical Psychiatry Unit has cared for 281 young people.
• The dedicated Dartmouth Health faculty and staff at Hampstead and DHMC have enhanced the timeliness and therapeutic quality of inpatient care with measurable results such as reduced emergency department boarding, quicker time to inpatient admission and expanded therapeutic programming.
• Dartmouth Health’s outpatient child psychiatry services provide mental health care for youth across the health system. From July 2025 through June 2026, we cared for 4,308 unique patients.
• We have worked to integrate behavioral health into primary care practices throughout New Hampshire, enabling earlier identification and treatment in a young person’s community, which is key to improving access and outcomes.
• We provide inpatient child psychiatry consultation services for pediatric patients at Golisano Children's Hospital at Dartmouth Health, where we cared for 356 patients between July 2025 and June 2026.
• We have embedded child mental health providers in sleep medicine, pediatric hematology-oncology, pediatric gastroenterology and pediatric endocrinology clinics to make mental health services more accessible to youth receiving care for physical ailments.
• The Child Psychiatry section at Dartmouth Health maintains statewide partnerships with state agencies and independent programs that serve patients with developmental disabilities, youth involved in child welfare and juvenile justice systems and rural communities with limited access to child psychiatry.
Our young people need more than just services; they need more skilled professionals to offer those services throughout our state. At Dartmouth Health, we make use of our model clinical sites and skilled faculty to train child psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists and social workers.
Dartmouth Health’s department of psychiatry is guided by the desire to increase timely access to high-quality care. We want every young person and family to find the care they need where and when they need it, and we are eager to partner with others who share this goal.
William Torrey, MD, is chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Health and Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Jennifer McLaren, MD, M.D., DFAACAP, is section chief, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Dartmouth Health Children’s, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and The Dartmouth Institute at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.
About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and largest private employer, serves patients across New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,300 providers in nearly every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. Its network of hospitals, outpatient centers, clinics and home care facilities, spans a broad geographical area. Year after year, DHMC is named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is consistently recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, northern New England’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of less than than 60 total nationally; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital, the Golisano Children's Hospital at Dartmouth Health, and more than 20 locations around the region; eight member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont, Hampstead, and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Dartmouth Health Home Care; Dartmouth Health Connected Care Center for Telehealth, serving patients as far away as Texas; and more than 30 primary and multi-specialty clinics across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its partnership with Dartmouth College, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the White River Junction VA Medical Center, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials with international impact. Dartmouth Health and its more than 16,000 employees are committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in the communities it serves and to providing every patient with exceptional, state-of-the-art, personalized care. Learn more at dartmouth-health.org.