Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 30, 2023
Most of us understand how it feels to be so frustrated all we want to do is SCREAM! That’s the way I’ve been feeling for decades. Reading the news on the shortage of mental health providers just sent a sense of hopelessness up my spine. I screamed!
As the mental health crisis in children and teens worsens, the dire shortage of mental health providers is preventing young people from getting the help they need
Steven Berkowitz, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Sun, August 27, 2023
The situation is so grim that in October 2021, health care professionals declared a national emergency in child mental health. Since then, the crisis has not abated; it’s only gotten worse. But there are not enough mental health professionals to meet the need.
The hospital where I practice recently admitted a 14-year-old girl with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, to our outpatient program. She was referred to us six months earlier, in October 2022, but at the time we were at capacity. Although we tried to refer her to several other hospitals, they too were full. During that six-month wait, she attempted suicide.
Unfortunately, this is an all-too-common story for young people with mental health issues. A 2021 survey of 88 children’s hospitals reported that they admit, on average, four teens per day to inpatient programs. At many of these hospitals, more children await help, but there are simply not enough services or psychiatric beds for them.
So these children languish, sometimes for days or even a week, in hospital emergency departments. This is not a good place for a young person coping with grave mental health issues and perhaps considering suicide. Waiting at home is not a good option either – the family is often unable or unwilling to deal with a child who is distraught or violent.
I am a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Colorado, where I founded and direct the Stress, Trauma, Adversity Research and Treatment Center. For 30 years, my practice has focused on youth stress and trauma.
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First getting people to understand what #PTSD was seemed an impossible endeavor. Then the battle was to get the message across that no one had to suffer when they could heal as a survivor of what trauma did to them. That offered them hope they weren’t stuck the way they were. The problem back then was there were not enough mental health professionals with specialized training in trauma.