Kids stuck in ER after mental health crisis with nowhere to go

A bill is making its way through the legislature aiming to address a crisis in youth mental health.

Two years ago, Children's Hospital Colorado declared a state of emergency. Its emergency rooms were overrun with kids attempting suicide. That crisis has not gone away.

The challenge is getting children who've been stabilized into the right care. Now, they can spend days on end, just waiting in the emergency department.

"For all the kids who are out there in pain, it truly is a distressing situation, just as an individual, as a physician whose job it is to try to help people in these situations, I oftentimes feel at a loss to help, particularly when there's a kid who looks very similar to my daughter, staring at me like I can't fix the problem in front of me," said Children's Hospital Colorado emergency physician, Dr. Kevin Carney.

Carney says he and other Children's staff feel heartache when the next phase in a child's recovery from the crisis isn't available. They may have stabilized but they are not ready to return home.  

So, they have to stay in the emergency department because there's nowhere else to go for continued care.

"Walking through our emergency department and looking into a patient's room, who has been here for multiple days, will knock you back. And it takes your breath away. It makes you cry when you go home. At the end of the day, it makes you reflect on it and really just feel that we're not doing enough," Carney said.

"I think it's a story that needs to be told," said Children's Vice President for Advocacy and Community Health, Zach Zaslow.

Zaslow went to the State Capitol to drive the urgency of the need for solutions.

"All the things that make a young person whole and help with their social and emotional development. They're separated from all of that because we don't have a system that can keep them safe anywhere else," Zaslow said. "If we could build that middle part of the continuum, those intensive services for kids who need a smooth handoff back to their local community, we could be doing so much better.

In specially equipped rooms the emergency department is able to keep kids safe at Children's.

But when they can't move forward with what the experts know is the path to recovery, they're left to wait.  Sometimes for days or weeks. Or if they go home without the proper treatment, they end up back in the ER.

"And when we hand off a patient shift after shift and we say so-and-so is still here, it's a sad conversation because we all know what that implies, which is that that kid is not getting the care that they need," Carney added.

State lawmakers are expected to pass a bill HB23-1269 this week that would create a funding pool to incentivize residential treatment providers.

The goal is to expand intensive treatment options for children with behavioral health needs.