Health Update: $30,000 Dress Best for Less donation for PUSD Wellness Center – What Experts Say

Dress Best for Less (DBFL) has announced a generous donation of $30,000 to the PUSD Wellness Center. The gift will strengthen mental health support for Piedmont students by fully offsetting the cost of a Wellness Center counselor for the 2026-27 academic year.

The PUSD Wellness Center serves students at Piedmont High School, Piedmont Middle School, and Millennium High School, providing a safe space where expert staff can connect students to the right level of counseling and wellness support at no cost to families. During the previous school year, the Wellness Center provided over 2,000 hours of therapy for students, and delivered hundreds of hours of additional support during student drop-ins. The DBFL donation will help ensure that PUSD students continue to benefit from mental health and wellness support, whether they need a brief check-in, short-term counseling during a stressful period or longer-term care.

Wellness Center leaders announced the DBFL donation during a parent panel discussion on student wellness and academic stress hosted by the PUSD Wellness Center on Monday, January 26th, 2026. The evening’s program, which featured mental health experts from a range of disciplines, explored how mental health and wellness challenges can show up in students’ lives and what families, educators and peers can do to support them.

During the program, DBFL President Nagisa Yamamoto spoke about the DBFL’s commitment to supporting Piedmont youth. “DBFL is thrilled to support the needs of the Piedmont students through this donation,” Yamamoto said. “We feel it will help the well-being of many, many students.”

In addition to providing mental health and wellness support for PUSD students, the Wellness Center is also an important training site for future mental health professionals as a member of the Berkeley Psychology Internship Consortium. Each year, the PUSD Wellness Center welcomes a small group of graduate student counseling interns from UC Berkeley, The Wright Institute, the University of San Francisco, and Saint Mary’s College of Moraga. The counseling interns are selected from a national pool of applicants and represent diverse social, ethnic, and gender expansive groups. These internship positions expand the Wellness Center’s student support capacity while preparing clinicians for career pathways in youth mental health.

The Wellness Center’s mission is grounded in the philosophy that caring for student mental health and wellness strengthens the entire school community. When students have the support they need, they can bring more focus to the classroom, build healthier relationships and carry coping skills far beyond graduation. With DBFL’s generous gift, Piedmont’s support system for student wellness is stronger than ever for the year ahead. 

For more information about the PUSD Wellness Center, or to donate, please visit Piedmontwellness.org.