HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – According to a study recently published by the CDC, over one million emergency room visits every year involve children and adolescents with mental health issues and the number is rising.
Nationwide, since 2015, the number of pediatric mental health visits to emergency rooms has risen eight percent but the numbers here in Southeast Florida are even higher.
“It’s shifting ever constant the numbers so to say them it’s a trend for certain is the right way we have been seeing an upward trend of kids coming in,” said Oscar Gonzalez, Director of Social Work at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.
He said that since 2020, there’s been a 21 percent increase in the number of parents who’ve brought their children to their ER for a mental health crisis or help with intervention.
“Some not always needing that crisis level but needing that reference point of where they could go,” he said.
So what’s driving this trend?
“One specific reason I think is really driving this is that a lot of people focused on the pandemic but we want to know start focusing on what’s called the pandemic paradox all the things we did that mitigated the dangers and risks of life saving interactions when the pandemic hit us, when now, those sequelae, are starting to show up in an increased in mental health as an increase of mental health in young people. And that’s always been present but now with all of this it’s actually heightened the mental health needs,” Gonzalez said.
In 2022, Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital added round the clock mental health care and additional staff to handle the increased volume.
“At Memorial here and at Joe DiMaggio we’re looking at what we call social determinants of heath which means we’re looking at the outside factors, environmental, that cause stress and that was always the goal and when the pandemic hit we start mobilizing more services,” said Gonzalez.
Perhaps not surprisingly many mental health issues in children first appear around the age 14, not only as a result of hormonal changes, but also a shift in environment.
Moving from grade school to high school commonly leads to increases social and scholastic pressures.