New St. Paul clinic expands mental health services for kids

Children and teens will have improved access to mental health and substance abuse treatment thanks to a new clinic on St. Paul’s East Side.

Wilder East Clinic opened last month at 445 Etna St., just north of Interstate 94.

The Wilder Foundation decided to expand its services due to a growing need for services for children and long wait times at its site on University Avenue in St. Paul.

When it came to choosing the location, the foundation listened to families it already served and looked at which communities didn’t have much access to the services it offers, said Pahoua Yang, vice president of Community Mental Health and Wellness at the Wilder Foundation.

Yang, who grew up on the East Side, the epicenter of Minnesota’s Hmong community, said she and her colleagues saw it as an opportunity to address a shortage of mental health care available for children across the Twin Cities, while providing culturally specific care for her community and others that call the East Side area home.

“Many of our staff are from the communities that we’re serving,” said Yang. “[They] have a lot of experience serving our communities, and for many of our staff, opening the clinic on the East Side is like coming home for them.”

The new clinic has 11 full-time mental health practitioners, some of whom work with infants and children up to age 5, while the rest serve children ages 6 to 18. They treat not just the child but the child’s family as well, said Vanessa Ng, Wilder East’s clinical director. 

“The child is never in a vacuum coming in through the door, so we try to get family engagement and participation,” Ng said. “If the child is presenting as unstably housed, that’s because the family is unstably housed, and it’s really hard to address the individual child issue without making sure that the family has security and resources and a foundation of health in order to support the child.”

Mental health treatment for children is much less verbal than therapy for adults, Ng said. It includes art and play therapy, which take place in playrooms with toys and art supplies.

“[The children] may not understand all of what’s happening in their family dynamics, for example, but they feel the consequence of when there’s something upsetting happening around them,” Ng said. “So a lot of children will act out how they feel.”

Addressing culturally specific needs

Due to an increase in immigrant populations and their desire for services, Wilder hired mental health practitioners who can speak their clients’ languages and share their cultural experiences.

The number of patients seen by practitioners at the new site has been steadily growing, said Richard Gibson, Wilder’s director of achievement. 

On a slow day, they may see 10 to 12 children, with about half choosing a remote telehealth option, whereas a more typical day consists of around a couple of dozen sessions. 

“Our hope is to really ramp that up — there’s no wait to get in right now, which is kind of uncommon in the mental health scene these days,” Gibson said. “Families can drop in over at the Wilder Center for an initial assessment and set up a meeting and start over here right away.”

According to a 2022 statewide student survey conducted by several state agencies, the number of Minnesota students who reported long-term mental health problems increased to 29% from 23% in 2019 and 18% in 2016.

To get the word out about the new youth-focused clinic, the foundation has been informing existing clients at the first Wilder location, which continues to offer services to both adults and children.

Gibson, who initially worked for Wilder through a partnership with St. Paul Public Schools to provide school-based mental health and wellness services, said the foundation has also informed parents with children in east metro school districts, including St. Paul and Woodbury. 

“We try to attend community events as they happen, like the Hmong Sports Day that’s coming up and the Pride Festival,” Gibson said. “These are outreach opportunities to say hello to our families on the East Side and introduce ourselves again.”