Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, another crisis has emerged. Increasing need for psychiatric treatment for children and adolescents. The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association declared a national emergency in children’s mental health late last year as children’s hospitals reportedly saw a 45 percent increase in pediatric self-injury and suicide cases between January and July of 2021. Pediatric mental health-related hospital emergency department visits increased 24 percent for children ages 5-11 and 31 percent for older children and adolescents.
With an Access TeleCare telePsychiatry program, hospitals have the necessary clinical support and resources to timely and appropriately evaluate, diagnose, and make recommendations for treatment for children and adolescents who present in their emergency departments in psychiatric crisis.
Watch Dr. John Kenny, Access TeleCare’s chief of psychiatry, discuss the imperative for addressing children’s mental health amid the pandemic and how our telePsychiatry program helped one 10-year child get an accurate diagnosis of OCD that was causing intrusive thoughts of harming another person.
