After daughter’s death, Santa Rosa parents inspired to bring new mental health treatment to Sonoma County

After Santa Rosa residents David and Seong Brown lost their teenage daughter tragically in May 2018, they were determined to learn how to prevent it from happening to other families. Now, they're working to bring a new mental health treatment program to Sonoma County by 2020 that they hope will do just that.

Elizabeth Morgan Brown was just 15 when she left Cardinal Newman High School to attend Bard College at Simon's Rock in Massachusetts, a specialized university for students who want to start college early. But when she was 19, about to graduate from college, she took her own life after battling depression and anxiety for years. The Browns had struggled to find effective health care for their daughter. They said her appointments at Kaiser Permanente were irregular and infrequent, and wished that there had been more comprehensive treatment for her.

They created the Elizabeth Morgan Brown Memorial Fund in her honor, a nonprofit to raise awareness about mental illness. A few months after their daughter's death, they met with the nonprofit One Mind, which funds brain and mental health research and discovered the program they'd been looking for: Applications for Serious Psychiatric Illness Recovery.

The program uses an emerging treatment model called coordinated specialty care, which includes five factors: medication, psychotherapy, family-focused therapy, supportive education and employment and case management. What makes this program different from current mental health treatment, the Browns said, is the team-based approach.

“This program is not like any that's available in this area,” Seong Brown said. “The patient is the center of this whole thing. So we work as a team to provide this comprehensive, highly coordinated, highly caring, loving program so that patients feel like he or she is supported by everyone.”

The Elizabeth Morgan Brown One Mind ASPIRe program of Sonoma County likely will be focused on youths between the ages of 12 and 30, One Mind President Brandon Staglin said. One Mind estimates that there are about 420 young people every year in Sonoma County who develop psychotic illness for the first time, Staglin said.

The program will be administered from a clinic in Sonoma County. The location hasn't been determined yet, but Staglin said it will tentatively open by June 2020.

The program is already active in Napa and Solano counties. The goal, Staglin said, is to increase the recovery rate for serious psychiatric illness and the access to specialty care by 2040.

Staglin said patients in the program typically meet with their therapist and other members of their treatment team at least once a week. He said that regular sessions keep them engaged in their treatment on an ongoing basis, rather than feeling like they're waiting around to be treated.

The Browns said it was appalling that many health care providers don't treat mental illness as seriously or immediately as they do physical ailments, but expressed hope that this new program would address that problem.

“If this coordinated specialty care was available to (Elizabeth) ... my wife and I both believe that she would be here today,” David Brown said. “She would be back in college and she would be finishing her college degree, and she would be a wonderful participant in society.”

The program will be a private-public partnership, Staglin said. One Mind has already received $1.5 million from Kaiser to be used over 36 months, Staglin said. After that, Staglin and the Browns said county and philanthropic support will hopefully keep the program running. The Browns are hosting a fundraising concert Oct. 13 at 3 p.m. at Sonoma Academy for the program, in honor of their daughter.

Robin Betts, vice president of quality, clinical effectiveness and regulatory services for Kaiser's Northern California region, said in a prepared statement that Kaiser was “proud” to be partnering with One Mind and the Elizabeth Morgan Brown Memorial Fund to help establish the program in Sonoma County.

“Kaiser Permanente is committed to finding solutions and creating a model that effectively meets the growing needs in the community for mental health care,” Betts said in a statement.

One Mind is in the process of selecting a local health care organization that will operate the mental health clinic, Staglin said, and will make a decision by Oct. 15.

“The hope is that (this program) will enable so many more young people to recover from this serious psychiatric illness that they're starting to develop ... that they will continue to be living lives that are meaningful to them and meaningful to their communities,” Staglin said. “We also hope that this will serve as a model for starting similar programs around other parts of California that don't have such programs yet.”

You can reach Staff Writer Chantelle Lee at 707-521-5337 or chantelle.lee@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ChantelleHLee.