“I’m pretty naturally optimistic; I don’t think you could be in my business without waking up every day and believing that things can get better,” said Senator Chris Murphy on Sunday evening at the Crosby Street Hotel. He was speaking specifically about youth mental health—an issue he’s championed for years—at last night’s The Center for Youth Mental Health at NewYork-Presbyterian annual benefit. The Connecticut senator was joined by Dr. Charlie Shaffer and Dr. Joshua Gordon for a timely conversation about the crisis facing young people today and the role that public policy, clinical care, and community can play in addressing it.

The evening, hosted by Tory Burch, Dr. Zandy Forbes, Chip Kaye, and Anna Wintour, unfolded in three parts—cocktails, a conversation, and dinner—all in support of a Center that has become a national model for innovative, evidence-based youth mental health care. Founded more than a decade ago, the Center—housed within NewYork-Presbyterian and affiliated with psychiatrists at both Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons—has grown in response to an urgent need. One in five adolescents experiences a mental health challenge each year, and suicide remains the leading cause of death for individuals aged 15 to 24. The Center’s mission is not only to treat these conditions but also to help young people thrive.

The room was filled with familiar faces from the fashion and philanthropic spheres. Tory Burch, a longtime supporter of the Center, was joined by designers Emily Adams Bode Aujla and Aaron Singh Aujla, Christopher John Rogers, and Batsheva Hay. Jordan Roth, Allison Sarofim, Indré Rockefeller, and Wendi Murdoch were also in attendance. Young Patrons Committee member Alexandre Hankin and Casey Kholberg had flown in from the UK, while Serena Marron made an appearance fresh off her Blackberry Farm wedding weekend.

Back in the Crosby screening room, the conversation unfolded: “These twelve years have been a record of success,” said Dr. Shaffer of the Center, “but also a record of increasing need. And as the youth mental health crisis has grown, it’s really gotten to a point where I almost think that it’s too big for psychiatry alone. It’s something that the country itself has to have a greater perspective in seeing.”

That wider perspective is exactly what Sunday’s conversation aimed to provide. Dr. Shaffer framed the issue clearly: “To what extent do we treat this as a psychiatric problem—something that can be solved by biomedical intervention—and to what extent must we see it as a societal one that demands broader, structural solutions?”