The growing mental health crisis among children under the age of eight: recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, editorial, and commentary
The panel of medical experts recommended Tuesday that doctors screen all children under the age of 8 for anxiety, in an effort to highlight the growing mental health crisis among American youth.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — a volunteer panel of experts who make recommendations about the likely benefits and harms of various preventive health services — also reaffirmed its position that all adolescents ages 12 to 18 should be screened for depression.
The task force hopes to reduce the number of children whose mental health conditions can’t be seen. According to the CDC, over 5 million children have been diagnosed with anxiety, while over 3 million have been diagnosed with depression. Those national estimates also predate the Covid pandemic, and there are troubling signs that mental health distress among children intensified in the last few years.
“The earlier you identify symptoms, the earlier you intervene, and that reduces the amount of time a child is suffering,” said Dr. Cori Green, director of Behavioral Health Education and Integration in pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, who did not work on the new recommendations.
Editor’s Note: Moira Szilagyi, MD, PhD, FAAP, is the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The opinions expressed in this commentary are of the author. View more opinion at CNN.
We need more investment in health care capacity for children. This includes raising Medicaid payment rates to at least what Medicare and private insurance pay for the same services. Since more than half of all US children are enrolled in Medicaid, payment disparities are reducing access to care for children in every community, from the rural doctor’s offices to the big-city children’s hospitals. It is no wonder that we are seeing rural and community hospitals close. Even before the pandemic, pediatric inpatient beds had decreased by more than 19%, with rural areas seeing even greater losses of pediatric beds, at 26%.
Other places in the United States are not so lucky. A research shows that there isn’t enough space for children to get mental health help. A 2020 federal survey found that the number of residential treatment facilities for kids had fallen 30% from where it was in 2012.
A Pediatric-Focused Mental and Behavioral Health Campus to Help Children With Suicidal Thoughts or Mental Health Matters
For parents, I can offer some reassurance – and some advice. It’s important for you and your family to be protected from the flu and Covid-19 now. Regular hand washing, staying home if you are sick and covering your mouth and nose to reduce viral transmission from coughs and sneezes will all help.
Most illnesses can be treated at home, but if you are worried about your child’s symptoms, don’t hesitate to call your child’s pediatrician. Try to be patient as they are most likely getting calls from other parents and caregivers.
Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or visit the hotline’s website.
There has been a significant rise in the number of mental health challenges that can lead to suicide. In 2019, 1 in 3 high school students and half of all female students reported persistent feelings of hopelessness and sadness, up from 40% in 2009. And there was a 36% increase in students who reported considering suicide, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study found that many children who struggle with suicide thoughts don’t go to the emergency room.
To help more of these children, Holmes’ hospital system is working with county health and human services to help create a pediatric-focused mental and behavioral health campus. It will double the size of Rady’s inpatient behavioral health unit, in addition to beefing up services for children who need therapy but don’t need to be hospitalized.
“Over the last nine years, where we would see about anywhere from one to two patients a day that were having a behavioral health crisis, now we’re seeing 20-plus a day,” said Holmes, who was not involved in the new research.
Poverty, historical trauma and marginalization, trouble in school, online bullying and the pressures brought by social media are just some of the problems that children are facing in their lives.
When a child is thinking about suicide, adults can help. She advises caregivers to be on the lookout for problems at school or among friends and to watch for a child who is isolating themselves or showing signs of more anxiety or aggression than usual.
They might have trouble sleeping or act out. Irritability and being more withdrawn and isolating themselves are a lot of things that we oftentimes will think about,” Brewer said.
It’s important for parents to be able to listen and talk to their kids. Brewer said that to help promote positive relationships they should try to understand what is happening with them.
It is necessary to develop a strategy to help support all kinds and focus on some of the traumas that can affect health. To make sure children have a safe place to grow and thrive is something we need to do.
How many mental health visits include diagnoses of mental health disorders or intentional self-harm? Dr. Scott Hadland, pediatric neuroradiology, and pediatric neuropsychiatry
The researchers examined how many visits included diagnoses of mental health disorders or intentional self-harm. They analyzed mental health revisits, meaning a patient went to the emergency department again within six months of their initial visit.
The most common diagnoses among the mental health emergency department visits were suicidal ideation or self-harm, representing 28.7% of patients; mood disorders at 23.5%; anxiety disorders at 10.4%; and disruptive or impulse control disorders at 9.7%.
“Given more-than-doubling in fentanyl overdose deaths in teens from 2019 to 2021 just published by the CDC, it concerns me that we may only get one opportunity to intervene and help this highly vulnerable population who we urgently need to keep,” pediatrician Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at Mass General for Children and Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the new study, wrote in an email to CNN.
We are seeing the rise of it. I run our primary care clinic for teens in Boston, and on a typical day in clinic, more than four out of every five teens I see are struggling with mental health concerns,” he said. We know that many young people were kept out of school because they were socially isolated by Covid. The rate of mental health problems is more likely to be the same now.
Hadland added that there is a growing need for improved access to mental health services for youth and better funding to keep these services sustained.