On any given day, pediatrician Lindsay Irvin estimates a quarter of her patients need psychiatric help. She sees teens who say they are suicidal, and elementary school children who suffer chest pains stemming from bullying anxiety.
Though she does her best, she doesn’t consider herself qualified to treat them at the level they need at her practice in San Antonio. She doesn’t have the training, she said, to figure which medications are best suited to treat their various mental health conditions. And she doesn’t have time. She’s juggling stomach ailments, vaccinations and ear aches.
As a result, she’s seen some of her patients wind up in the emergency room or going without care. These experiences evidence the degree of unmet need for mental health treatment. “I see kids’ lives destroyed by not getting care,” she said.
Now, research abstracts presented Monday by the American College of Emergency Physicians offers insights into how frequently patients with mental health issues land in the emergency room — often because opportunities to intervene earlier are missed.
[For more of this story, written by Shefali Luthra, go to http://khn.org/news/scarcity-o...lly-kids-land-in-er/]
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