US adolescents' mental disorders on rise amid reduction of medical facilities: report

NEW YORK - Mental health disorders are surging among US adolescents while the medical system failed to keep up, and options for inpatient and intensive outpatient psychiatric treatment eroded sharply, reported The New York Times on Sunday.

In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. Suicide rates, stable from 2000 to 2007, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

However, nationally, the number of residential treatment facilities for people under the age of 18 fell to 592 in 2020 from 848 in 2012, a 30 percent decline, according to the most recent federal government survey.

"The decline is partly a result of well-intentioned policy changes that did not foresee a surge in mental-health cases. Social-distancing rules and labor shortages during the pandemic have eliminated additional treatment centers and beds," the report cited experts.

Absent that option, emergency rooms have taken up the slack. A recent study of 88 pediatric hospitals around the country found that 87 of them regularly board children and adolescents overnight in such rooms, according to the report.

According to the Joint Commission, a nonprofit organization that helps set national health care policy, adolescents who come to emergency rooms for mental health reasons should stay there no longer than four hours, as an extended stay can risk patient safety, delay treatment and divert resources from other emergencies.

In 2021, however, the average adolescent boarding in such rooms at Boston Children's Hospital spent nine days waiting for an inpatient bed, up from three and a half days in 2019; at Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora in 2021, the average wait was eight days, and at Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford, it was six, added the report.