ER visits sharply increased for young people in mental distress, study finds

Mental health-related emergency room visits by children, teens and young adults have soared from 2011 to 2020, according to a report published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The biggest increase was for suicide-related visits, which increased fivefold. The findings indicated an "urgent" need for expanded crisis services, according to the team of researchers and doctors who published the report.

The research, drawn from data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, examined the annual number of mental health-related emergency room visits by people aged 6 to 24. From 2011 to 2020, the figure rose from 4.8 million to 7.5 million, the team found, a period during which the total number of pediatric emergency room visits fell. Indeed, the proportion of emergency department visits for mental health-related problems roughly doubled, from 7.7% to 13.1%.

Visits increased for many conditions, including mood and behavioral disorders, substance abuse and psychosis. But the increase in suicide-related issues has been most pronounced, rising to 4.2% of all pediatric ER visits in 2020, up from 0.9% in 2011.

ImageCredit... Tim Gruber for New York Times

A growing number of children and adolescents are struggling with mental distress, but the medical systems have not kept up. Insufficient treatment options and the availability of preventive care lead many families to seek help in emergency rooms, which are ill-equipped to deal with mental health issues. A recent New York Times investigation found that hundreds of young people sleep in emergency rooms every night, waiting to be placed into appropriate treatment programs.

"Dedicated national commitment will be needed to close the gaps," the JAMA paper concluded.

For many decades, t...