Governor Hochul Unveils Proposals Building on Her Nation-Leading Commitment to Protect the Wellbeing of New York’s Youth

Governor Kathy Hochul today unveiled initiatives that will combat the youth behavioral health crisis in New York and expand the resources and tools available to protect New York’s kids as part of her 2026 State of the State. Her proposals include new legislation that will help protect children from online predators, scammers and harmful AI chatbots on popular digital platforms, establishing a first-of-its-kind, statewide expansion of Teen Mental Health First Aid training, and enhancing access to youth clubhouses. Governor Hochul has led the nation in protecting children online, advancing efforts to curtail the use of smartphones in schools, enact social media warning labels, restrict addictive feeds, and create safeguards against harmful AI companions. Governor Hochul’s focus on youth mental health led to the creation of more school-based mental health clinics, community-based treatment options, and peer-based supports for youth and young adults. Governor Hochul will continue to build on this progress to ensure kids are healthy and protected on and offline.

“As New York’s first mom Governor, protecting the well-being of our children is personal to me,” Governor Hochul said. “These proposals build on our nation-leading progress to ensure young people have the support, safeguards, and resources they need to stay healthy and safe.”

Promoting Youth Wellbeing

Equipping an Entire Generation with Mental Health First Aid Training

When teens experience mental health difficulties, their first resort is often to reach out to their peers. Likewise, young people are often best positioned to identify peers who are facing challenges. Research demonstrates that with training, they have the capacity to both identify and effectively respond to mental health challenges in ways that can improve and even save lives.

Continuing her multi-faceted approach to addressing a mental health crisis playing out among today’s youth, Governor Hochul is taking first-in-the-nation action to make Teen Mental Health First Aid training available to all 10th graders across New York State. This training helps young people identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental health and substance use challenges in their friends and peers. As part of this initiative, the State will also offer aligned training for adults who regularly interact with youth in schools and community programs to ensure they can assist young people in supporting their peers. This nationally-recognized curriculum introduces common mental health challenges for youth, reviews typical adolescent development, and teaches a five-step action plan for how to help young people in both crisis and non-crisis situations.

By investing in our young people, New York will equip students with the basic skills needed to support themselves and their peers, drive lasting cultural change in addressing mental health stigma, and ensure students graduating high school have been equipped with crucial mental health skills.

Expanding Youth Safe Spaces

Non-clinical, safe environments where teens can discuss their mental health fill an important role in the larger mental health support landscape. Teens in New York cite a need for these spaces to help them access the support they want and require. New York will expand the Office of Mental Health’s (OMH) Youth Safe Spaces program by designating two additional community organizations to provide supportive, non-judgmental environments where young people can access mental wellness resources, foster positive peer relationships, and engage in non-clinical activities. By increasing access to these spaces, the State will provide more youth and families with direct access to important mental wellness resources.

Recognizing Schools Providing Enhanced Mental Health Supports

New York will establish a new “Schools of Distinction in Supporting Strong Mental Health” designation to recognize and reward schools that have done an outstanding job providing strong, effective mental health supports, preventing crises, and reducing substance use. This award will set a recognized standard of excellence and go to schools that meet key benchmarks, such as conducting regular mental health screenings, promoting wellness and stigma reduction, and maintaining partnerships with community-based providers. Schools receiving this distinction will receive a financial award to recognize and further their work.

Hosting a Youth-Led Substance Use Prevention Symposium

To better target New York’s school-aged population and deter them from substance use, the Office of Addiction Services and Support (OASAS) will host a youth-led substance use symposium in which students can learn from their peers about the dangers of substance use, ways to strengthen their mental health, and how to access community-based resources. OASAS will also launch a youth-focused social media engagement strategy where youth-developed messages are featured on television, digital streaming services, and social media. By tailoring messaging for young people, by young people, the State will meet children where they are, in ways they can absorb and understand.

Ensuring All Child-Serving Clinicians In New York’s Office of Mental Health Settings Are Trained in Evidence-Based Practices

One in five youth and young adults experience mental health challenges. To ensure the care they receive is tailored, high-quality, and designed with their specific needs in mind, Governor Hochul will direct the OMH to publish a 10-year training roadmap for the implementation of evidence-based practices throughout New York State. This will ensure all child-serving clinicians in agency settings are trained in evidence-based practices, and increase the standard of care that youth receive in New York. This roadmap will secure New York’s role as a national leader in the promotion of evidence-based practices for youth mental health.

Opening Up To 15 New Youth Clubhouses to Support Community-Based Recovery

Many of the young people who engage in substance misuse or suffer from a substance use disorder seek community and understanding as they recover and find their footing. Clubhouses offer non-clinical, community-building, life-skills training, recreational activities, and other support services that promote self-esteem, a sense of community, and overall well-being. To create greater access statewide, particularly in underserved counties, OASAS will open up to 15 new Youth Clubhouses, co-located with existing Recovery Community and Outreach Centers.

Bolstering Supports for LGBTQ+ New Yorkers

LGBTQ+ youth suffer from high rates of depression and anxiety. The federally-funded 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s specialized service for LGBTQ+ youth served between 50,000 and 60,000 young people per month, providing vital support that improved and saved lives before the current Administration chose to shutter it.

To continue serving young people in New York’s LGBTQ+ community, Governor Hochul will direct the OMH to partner with a national crisis center to provide youth with access to trained crisis counselors who specialize in issues the LGBTQ+ community face. The State will also provide training to hundreds of local 988 crisis counselors to prepare them to handle specific concerns of LGBTQ+ youth.

Additionally, the State will announce a new legal hotline and resource website for the LGBTQ+ community, including information about legal rights, housing, healthcare, and other important topics. By enhancing the systemic support infrastructure for the LGBTQ+ community, the State continues to demonstrate its staunch commitment to this community in the face of federal attacks.

Establishing a Young Adult Recovery Residence For Individuals Recovering From Opioid Addiction

Access to safe housing is one of the top factors that can positively impact substance use disorder and opioid recovery at any age. To build on Governor Hochul’s commitment to ensuring the health and safety of our young people, she will direct OASAS to establish the State’s first Young Adult Recovery Residence. This initiative, which will be funded with a federal State Opioid Response grant, will provide housing and services for up to 35 young adults with substance use disorder and opioid addiction. Wrap around recovery services, including housing, are essential to helping individuals reach and maintain their recovery goals, and live a healthy lifestyle.

Scaling Mental Health Supports for Indigenous Youth

Tribal youth experience disproportionally high rates of depression, anxiety, substance use, and suicide, reflecting the impacts of historical trauma, ongoing discrimination, and limited access to mental health services that reflect Indigenous cultures and values. To improve mental health outcomes and strengthen cultural support for Indigenous students, New York State will partner with all Tribal Nations to support Indigenous students' mental health in ways reflecting their cultures and communities. Building on the Indigenous Mental Wellbeing Pilot Program, the State will expand the use of transitional support workers and peer advocates to all Tribal Nations and Indigenous-serving school districts with a government-to-government relationship with the State. The initiative also stands up an Indigenous School Mental Health Workforce Center to support SUNY students seeking careers in school-based mental health.

Safeguarding Kids Online

Safe By Design: Creating Safer Digital Environments for Kids

Governor Hochul has taken nation-leading actions to protect our children from harm online. The SAFE for Kids Act, signed into law in 2024, represents the nation’s most thoughtful policy prescription to curb the negative influence addictive social media features have on youth mental health. The SAFE for Kids Act also set important national precedents about enhanced age verification, and required that social media companies use strong processes to identify and subsequently restrict certain features on child accounts. The Governor has also worked to ban smartphones in schools, set first-in-the-nation safeguards for AI chatbots posing as friends, outlaw AI-generated child sexual abuse material, enact social media warning labels, and invest in offline spaces where kids can thrive.

Building on these actions, Governor Hochul will take bold steps to protect children from online predators, scammers and harmful AI chatbots integrated on online platforms and ensure online platforms prioritize kids’ safety over profit.

Governor Hochul will pursue legislation expanding age verification requirements beyond social media platforms to online game platforms, establishes new safety and child-oriented design features to help shield children from online harms, vest greater control to parents, and enhance privacy standards on platforms:

• Restrict the use of integrated AI chatbot features on social media by children.
• Limit direct messages from non-connections to minor accounts.
• Default children to the highest privacy settings on covered platforms, including restrictions on real-time location sharing data.
• Implement common sense parental controls over a child’s ability to make or receive payments on online platforms.

These actions, paired with the other nation-leading efforts already underway, highlight New York’s commitment to ensuring the safety of our children. By enforcing these thoughtful, effective, and potentially life-saving policies, New York is one step closer to ensuring that our children are protected from abuse and exploitation online.

Ensuring Fair Play in Online Betting and Limiting Access For Young People

As online sports betting becomes immensely popular, and new, more accessible online gambling platforms become more sophisticated, it is essential to ensure that young people are protected from the harmful effects of gamified sports betting. Governor Hochul will direct the Gaming Commission to explore effective ways to ensure young people are not illegally downloading betting apps, creating accounts, or using the accounts of others, including the use of biometric approaches. These actions will protect young people from the harms of online betting which include significant financial loss and addictive behavior.

Promoting Responsible Digital Citizenship: Supporting Distraction-Free Schools and Student Mental Health

Building on the success of her nation-leading distraction-free schools policy, the Governor will direct SED to develop a suite of resources for students, teachers, and parents to support responsible technology use, and how to be good digital citizens. Complementing the recent work of the New York Office of Mental Health in sharing best practices for safe social media usage, these resources will help students understand why devices can impact focus and learning, how to manage social media and AI responsibly, and how to protect their mental health.

The resources will include evidence-based lessons on safe online behavior for students in grades K-12 (including how to manage privacy, digital footprints, cyberbullying, and healthy device habits), grade-level teacher guides on how to promote responsible technology use, regional teacher trainings aligned with distraction free school policies, and toolkits and webinars for parents to reinforce responsible technology and device use at home. By reiterating the importance of digital responsibility, these resources promote online safety, enhance responsible technology use learning, and equip students and educators with resources to protect the mental health of our students.

Governor Hochul’s nation-leading $1 billion mental health initiative and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding in subsequent budgets is significantly expanding access to care for young people and their families – from increasing inpatient and residential treatment capacity to building community-based services designed to help youth remain at home and in their community:

• Governor Hochul also expanded school-based mental health clinics, which help students get a licensed mental health care provider in a familiar stigma-free setting on their school campus. The state now supports 1,300 clinic satellites, up from 872 in 2020, covering 25 percent of all NYS public schools.
• Governor Hochul’s focus on youth mental health also led to the creation of new Youth Assertive Community Treatment teams to support young people with serious emotional disturbances who are either at risk of entering, or are returning home from high intensity services, such as inpatient settings or residential services. New York funds 42 new Youth ACT teams — 23 now operational -- in 31 counties, providing youth and family therapy, medication management, family and peer support, and skill-building.
• There are also now 65 Home Based Crisis Intervention Teams - including 60 that are now accepting referrals - which serve youth between the ages of 5 and 20 and provide intensive individualized services to help families support young people recovering from mental illness in their own homes.
• Governor Hochul also established the Youth Mental Health Advisory Board, a 30-member advisory board which includes youth between the ages of 11 and 17. The advisory board convenes quarterly and is designed to ensure that youth-informed best practices continue to be incorporated in developing behavioral health programs and policies.
• Governor Hochul also expanded Youth Safe Spaces programs, which provide a place for young people between the ages of 12 and 24 to access behavioral health and wellness resources, foster positive relationships with their peers, and receive support in a comfortable setting. To support the initiative developed with input from the Governor’s Youth Mental Health Advisory Board, the Office of Mental Health awarded $7.5 million to establish four sites this fall and is soliciting proposals for additional locations to be awarded early next year.