“The Crisis Of Our Time”

 

Last week on The PediaBlog, we began observing Mental Health Awareness Month by taking the time to “look around, look within” and recognize how important the safety of our surroundings — in our homes, in our communities, outside in nature — is for supporting our mental health.

We also acknowledged a frightening statistic indicating that teenage girls in America are in trouble: 1 in 3 reported thinking seriously about attempting suicide in 2021, according to research from the CDC.

Is it not surprising, then, when we hear U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, M.D. refer to declining mental health in youth as “the crisis of our time”? Matt Richtel reveals another data point supporting Dr. Murthy’s concern:

Mental health-related visits to emergency rooms by children, teenagers and young adults soared from 2011 to 2020, according to a report published on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The sharpest increase was for suicide-related visits, which rose fivefold. The findings indicated an “urgent” need for expanded crisis services, according to the team of researchers and physicians who published the report.

 

The research exposes a U.S. health care system unable to meet the growing mental health needs of the pediatric population, says Richtel:

A growing number of children and adolescents are grappling with mental distress, but medical systems have not kept up. Insufficient treatment options and availability of preventive care is leading many families to seek help in emergency rooms, which are ill-equipped to deal with mental health-related issues. A recent New York Times investigation found that hundreds of young people sleep in emergency rooms every night, as they wait for placement in proper treatment programs.

 

Richtel explains why the gap continues to expand between the demand for mental health services and supply of specialists and clinics that can quickly and effectively provide badly needed evaluation and treatment:

For many decades, the nation’s medical infrastructure was built to serve young people dealing with infections, broken bones and other injuries suffered in accidents. Even as those issues remain, a significant shift has taken place in the nature of ailments suffered by children, teenagers and young adults. In 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a report noting that “mental health disorders have surpassed physical conditions” as the most common issues causing “impairment and limitation” among adolescents.

The training of pediatricians has not kept pace, and emergency rooms are designed to triage patients, not to serve as psychiatric units, even as options for inpatient and outpatient treatment have eroded.

 

Parents, of course, can play a vital role in helping their kids navigate through an inadequate mental health care system, says Caitlynn Peetz. Surgeon General Murthy wants parents to familiarize themselves with the 988 Suicide Prevention and Crisis Lifeline he helped establish:

But the most important thing parents can do is to simply remind their children that they’re ready to listen.

“The most important thing that you can do for your child during turbulence is to make sure that they know you love them and that they can talk to you,” he said. “For them just to know it’s OK for them to talk to you, it’s not something to be ashamed of, and there are people they can go to for help … can go a long way to helping a child feel that they’re not alone.”

 

Are parents listening? Tomorrow on The PediaBlog, we will look at another study to see if parents are ready and willing to have a difficult conversation about mental health with their kids.

 

(Google Images)

 

source https://www.thepediablog.com/2023/05/15/the-crisis-of-our-time/