Emergency room doctors beg for help treating children with mental health illnesses

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Faced with bottlenecks and backlogs of patients in need of emergency care, doctors say they are unequipped to handle the growing pediatric mental health crisis.

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Three influential groups of pediatricians and emergency medicine providers are pleading for more support and resources as the number of children and teenagers with mental health concerns overwhelm emergency departments nationwide.

"The scope of this problem is really great," said Dr. Mohsen Saidinejad, a professor of emergency medicine and pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. "But our ability to solve it is not there."

Saidinejad is the lead author of a joint policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the Emergency Nurses Association released Wednesday. The groups are calling for local communities to increase access to mental health services before emergency care is needed.

Every year, approximately half a million children with mental or behavioral health conditions are evaluated in emergency departments, according to the AAP. That number increased over the past decade, experts said.

Dr. Willough Jenkins, medical director of emergency and consultation liaison psychiatry at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, is on the front line of the surge.

She said that the number of kids seeking psychiatric emergency care in her ER has grown from approximately 30 a month in recent years to 30 a day.

Jenkins said that children as young as six are coming in, often talking about suicide.

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