The CHC Breakfast Partnering for Mental Health: The Conversation Continues

On March 16, 2017, more than 300 parents, professionals and community members gathered at Sharon Heights Golf and Country Club in Menlo Park for the 4th Annual CHC Breakfast. This year’s sold-out event continued the teen mental health and wellness conversation we began at last year’s breakfast and showcased CHC partners who are successfully making strides to combat teen anxiety, depression and suicide. The breakfast launched with an overview of CHC’s Teen Mental Health Initiative—our newest endeavor aimed at improving teen health and wellness by providing more therapy options, free community education and a higher degree of community engagement and collaboration.

CHC ED Rosalie Whitlock with (l-r) James Everitt, Jayne Appel, Nadia Ghaffari, Ramsey Khasho and Nancy Lublin

Guest speakers included Nancy Lublin, Founder & CEO, Crisis Text Line; Jayne Appel, NBA star and Bring Change 2 Mind Ambassador; Dr. James B. Everitt, Director, Office of Mission Initiatives & Institutional Planning, Sacred Heart Schools, and Nadia Ghaffari, a charismatic junior at Los Altos High School and founder of TeenzTalk.org. The discussion was moderated by CHC’s Dr. Ramsey Khasho.

Each of these powerful and influential speakers shared their personal motives for raising awareness about teen anxiety, depression and suicide, and touted the critical role partnerships play in building solutions. Nancy Lublin of Crisis Text Line said, “We are so glad to partner with CHC and its expanded affordable therapy services. Their efforts to bring the community together through partnerships and their new Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) are so needed.”

Breakfast Co-Chairs Perri Guthrie and Catherine Harvey

The Breakfast was hosted by Co-Chairs Catherine Harvey and Perri Guthrie. Sponsors included Stanford Children’s Health/Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, Taube Philanthropies and Wilkes Bashford. The CHC Breakfast raised awareness and critical dollars for CHC’s continued work. Thanks to generous community support, all donations to CHC’s Teen Mental Health Initiative (TMHI) will be matched up to two million dollars.

The CHC Breakfast Co-chairs closed the event by saying, “We are here to speak up and speak out to save lives. We want our children, our friends’ children and our community of young people, to be able to find wellness, hope and resiliency. This is the reason we are here today.”