What’s Possible: Evolving Solutions for Addressing Our Children’s Mental Health Crisis

Dr. Inger Burnett-Zeigler is a licensed clinical psychologist and associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. She has two decades of clinical experience helping people with stress, trauma, mood and anxiety conditions, and difficulty in interpersonal relationships. In her clinical practice she promotes holistic wellness through mindfulness, self-compassion and healthy behavior change. Inger’s scholarly work focuses on the role that social determinants of health play in mental illness and treatment, particularly in the Black community. She is the author of the book Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen: The Emotional Lives of Black Women. She has written dozens of articles and other publications on mental health in the Black community and lectures widely on barriers to access and engagement in mental health treatment, mindfulness and strategies to improve mental health outcomes and participation in treatment. Inger is an advocate for normalizing participation in mental health treatment and ensuring that all individuals have access to high-quality, evidence based mental health care. She is a frequent contributor to the public discourse on mental health and she has been featured in the New York Times, TIME Magazine, and Chicago Tribune. She is actively involved in the community and serves on several non profit boards including Thresholds (Vice President), African American Legacy of the Chicago Community Trust, and Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts). Inger received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Cornell University, her doctorate in clinical psychology from Northwestern University, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the VA Ann Arbor/University of Michigan. 

Dr. Milbrook is the Chief Program officer at Youth Guidance a youth-serving organization that believes no matter what challenges a young person faces they are much more likely to succeed when they can draw on support from caring adults. She brings more than 20 years of clinical experience working with adults, families, and youth in various settings. Previously, she was Vice President of Clinical Programs at UCAN, a youth development organization providing trauma-informed services. Dr. Milbrook teaches in the Chicago School of Professional Psychology's forensic program. She serves on the board of Illinois Collaboration on Youth (ICOY), Boulevard of Chicago, and the Wingspan Project. 

Youth Guidance partners with over 200 school communities in the Chicago region, working to disrupt and break cycles of inter-generational violence through a number of initiatives, including the Becoming A Man (BAM) & Working on Womanhood (WOW) programs. Culturally responsive, trauma-informed counselors and after-school staff work directly with teachers, parents, caregivers and families to meet young people where they are and help them remain on a path towards lifetime success through cognitive behavioral therapy, rites-of-passage curricula and other enrichment activities.

Youth Guidance is data-driven, research focused organization that has served Chicagoland families since 1924 and in recent years has expanded its programming to communities in eight states, serving over 14,000 young people.