MENTAL HEALTH EMERGENCY- According to pediatricians, child and adolescent psychiatrists and children’s hospitals there is a national emergency regarding the mental health of children and teens. Last year Children’s Hospitals nationwide saw a 31% increase in mental health admissions for younger people. Amy Wimpey Knight is President of the Children’s Hospital Association and shares more details on their findings.
“Certainly the pandemic put an exclamation point on what was a growing crisis beforehand,” Knight said. “If you look back about a decade or so what we’ve seen is about a 60% increase in the national suicide rate among teens and young adults from ages ten to twenty-four. And most recently we understand there about one in six children who are aged two to eight, many of them born during the pandemic who will suffer from mental behavioral development and disorder.”
The increase in mental health admissions for teens and children has come at a time when there’s a 20% shortage of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals needed to handle the surge in caseloads.
“Not every child will need a psychiatrist and hopefully not in many cases. So by also continuing to invest in other professionals whether that be school-based counselors or community resources, or just the training of primary care physicians to be able to take care of the lower-end mental health issues that start to show up in kids early in their life,” Knight said.
Mental health experts agree that adult addiction, incarceration, homelessness, and violence can often be traced to untreated mental health issues in childhood and adolescence. The Children’s Hospital Association is supporting bi-partisan legislation to provide more mental health resources to schools and hospitals.
