Massachusetts kids in psychiatric crisis spend weeks, months in ERs waiting for help
BOSTON -- Demand for inpatient mental health treatment is at an all-time high, especially for kids.
Kids in crisis often end up waiting for days or weeks in emergency rooms. It's a practice called "boarding." And the Department of Public Health says "boarding" has increased by up to 400% over the last two years.
One example of this is an athletic, sports-loving teenager whose mom spoke to WBZ-TV about her daughter's struggle with mental health issues. Recently after becoming angry, her mom says she kicked a hole in a wall at home.
"You just white knuckle it until you can't white knuckle it anymore, and that's when you go to the emergency department," the teen's mom told the I-Team.
Desperate, her mom brought her daughter to a Plymouth hospital to get help. Instead, she says her teen sat in the emergency room for more than five weeks waiting for an inpatient placement.
"For lack of a better comparison, it's basically like being in jail. They can't leave. They can't bring anything in. When I go visit her, she says she just staring at a wall because there is nothing else to do."
Waiting for mental health services in emergency room or medical units is called "boarding." The I-Team found in some cases that waiting could last weeks or months before a bed in a program becomes available. And while the kids wait, they get no therapy, no counseling and no schooling. And none of this is new.
Last May, the I-Team introduced a Southbridge 10-year-old who has behavioral and mental health challenges. His family says he sat in an emergency room for weeks until he was able to get into a program.
Even before the pandemic, the demand for mental health services for kids was on the rise. That increased demand has now become a crisis. In December of 2019, there were 33 referrals for inpatient treatment. Two years later in December of 2021, that number jumped to 226.
State Rep. Marjorie Decker has a number of bills in the legislative committee. One specifically addresses the time kids spend in ER's boarding. She tells WBZ-TV that kids are not getting the help they need. In 2020, the second-leading cause of death for kids 10-14 was suicide.
Decker says we are failing our children, and while millions have been invested in mental health, more needs to be done
The state says it has increased services for children and adolescents and added hundreds of inpatient treatment beds for kids. But, the I-Team has learned many of those beds are not being used. Of the 444 licensed psychiatric beds in Massachusetts, 89 are offline because of a lack of staffing.
That leaves many kids waiting in emergency rooms for help that can't come fast enough. Decker calls it a broken system.
"What we know is that the longer a kid sits in the ER waiting for care, the less likely they are to get the care that they would have been eligible for on day one," Decker says.
For families, that wait makes their children feel like nothing is being done to help them. The mom of the teenager telling us, "She thinks that I'm not doing anything I don't blame her. She says, 'It's awful here.' And I say, 'I know.' And she says, 'I couldn't possibly know.' And she's right."
With help from the I-Team and Rep. Decker, that woman's daughter is now in a program. There are a number of bills pending in the legislature to address the mental health crisis, including reducing boarding time in hospitals. The administration also says it has a multi-year plan for better access to care and has invested tens of millions of ARPA funding to support impatient and staffing issues.
