Ambassador Susan Rice, director of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council, laid out the Biden administration's plan to address the nation's burgeoning mental health crisis during an online briefing hosted by the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy and the Commonwealth Fund on Wednesday afternoon. Rice cited a report from 2019 that showed that one in three high school students said they felt persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the prior year – a 40% increase from a decade earlier. Additionally, teen suicide rates jumped by 57% from 2007 to 2018, with Black teens twice as likely to complete suicide versus white teens.