Written by Erin Bader
A recent article has highlighted a California approach to meeting the mental health needs of children before they reach a crisis point. According to the article from the Chief Healthcare Executive, Rady Children Hospital in San Diego has seen a recent decrease in children coming into the Emergency Department for mental health needs after the hospital started placing mental health providers in primary care clinics.
To date, Rady Children’s has seen a 40% reduction in mental health visits to the emergency department. The system has also reported a 44% decline in anxiety symptoms and a 62% drop in depression symptoms. “The difficult truth is that children and adolescents often do not receive mental health care when they need it,” Domonique Hensler, senior director of systemwide Care at Rady Children’s, and a co-author of the study, said in a statement. “The need for effective, accessible treatment is more pressing than ever,” Hensler said. “Our interdisciplinary, team-based approach to pediatric mental health care has been shown to be efficacious, accessible, and cost-effective.”
A recent Children’s Hospital Association survey found almost all pediatric hospitals (94%) said they have seen an increase in the number of children and teens requiring mental health services. More than half of children’s hospitals (58%) surveyed said they are concerned about a lack of mental health resources to care for those patients. The number of young people visiting emergency departments for mental health reasons rose from 4.8 million in 2011 to 7.5 million in 2020, according to a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The National Center can help your State, Tribe, or territory to build this type of cross-system collaboration through intensive technical assistance. To learn more about this practice and the research findings, you can read the full article on the Knowledge Hub.
