Morgan Stanley will distribute $20 million among seven non-profit groups working to combat mental health issues in children like suicide, depression, etc. The funds will be used to expand the seven group’s operations in the US, Britain, and Hong Kong.

Explaining the need for the initiative, which has been named the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children’s Mental Health, President of Morgan Stanley Foundation Joan Steinberg said that data indicated that almost 17 million children under the age of 18 in the US suffered from some mental health problem.

The seven groups that will receive grants from Morgan Stanley are the Jed Foundation, the Steve Foundation, the New York-based Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, Child Mind Institute, Hong Kong-based Mind HK, London’s Place2Be and Scottish Association for Mental Health.

Jed Foundation works towards bringing down incidents of suicide among teens in the US. The Steve Foundation works to address mental health issues among children of color.

The Child Mind Institute runs an online symptom checker in English and Spanish using which parents can detect learning and psychiatric issues with their children.

The Child Mind Institute will use the grant money to translate their full literature on mental health, which consists of over 1000 articles into Spanish. This will allow Spanish speaking people to improve their understanding of mental health issues among children further.

Secondly, the Institute will work to improve its online programs to make them more accessible and understandable for people living in remote, far-flung communities.

Steinberg also said that the Alliance would work with more organizations and companies to ensure continuous funding for the non-profit groups.

Non-profit groups normally run on very tight budgets relying mainly on philanthropy and government grants. The funding by Morgan Stanley will be of great help to these organizations in implementing their plans to combat mental health issues among children effectively.