Responding to the Youth Mental Health Crisis
Twenty percent of adolescents have a mental illness, such as anxiety or depression, severe enough to impair their lives, according to Dr. Steven Jewell, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a chair of the Department of Behavioral Health and Psychiatry at Akron Children’s Hospital.
“The numbers are striking,” he says. “Yet only one in five of those individuals ever get diagnosed and treated during adolescence. The other four go on into adulthood … with growing levels of disability.”
The pandemic has significantly increased the need for mental health care, and a shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists can be a barrier to that. While there are currently about 8,000 to 9,000 of these professionals in the country, according to the federal government, there would have to be about 50,000 to meet the need. It has caused the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to declare a national emergency in behavioral health.
Young people getting help — as early as possible — is the goal, Jewell says. He offers the example of a now-20-year-old he treated who initially experienced anxiety and depression symptoms in elementary school, but her pediatrician didn’t screen for mental illnesses. She later attempted suicide and spent time at a hospital. She received treatment, including medication for bipolar disorder, and is doing much better, preparing to go to college.
“I wound up presenting her case to our staff saying, This is an example of what we are capable of doing as an institution to help kids going forward,” Jewell says.
When risk assessments are performed by the Akron Children’s emergency department, youths who are actively suicidal are admitted into the hospital, but others may participate in the intensive outpatient program or partial hospital program, which offers individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy and expressive therapies like art and music therapy.
“Some of the kids who’ve been exposed to traumatic events have trouble talking about that stuff,” Jewell says, “and so sometimes it needs to come out in nonverbal ways through the expressive therapies.”
To meet patients where they are, Akron Children’s has further integrated mental health services into pediatric practices by increasing the number of therapists, educating pediatricians, employing telehealth services in rural areas and building regional behavioral health centers that also offer the intensive outpatient program and partial hospital program. Centers in Canton and Mansfield are set to open in June and July, respectively.
“The Akron Children’s Hospital leadership has really invested heavily in behavioral health services, mental health services, recognizing the importance of that,” Jewell says. “As the saying goes, No health without mental health.”