Young people experiencing emotional distress increasingly visited emergency rooms in the decade leading into the COVID pandemic, with suicide-related visits rising fivefold, a new study says.
The number of youths visiting the ER for psychiatric illnesses, drug abuse and alcohol addiction grew from 4.8 million (7.7% of all visits) to 7.5 million (13.1% of all visits) from 2011 to 2020, according to a study published Tuesday in Journal of the American Medical Association. Visits increased annually by an average of 8% over that time.
Visits for all types of mental illness “significantly increased,” but suicide-related visits spiked the most, increasing from 0.9% of all ER treatments in 2011 to 4.2% in 2020, the study says. That adds up to an average increase of 23.1% each year.
In the JAMA study, four researchers examined nationally representative data on patients aged 6-24 from an annual survey of pediatric emergency departments.
“These findings underscore an urgent need to improve crisis and emergency mental health service capacity for young people, especially for children experiencing suicidal symptoms,” the researchers wrote.
The study reflects the national state of emergency in children’s mental health that leading medical organizations declared in 2021, they added.
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The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association noted in a declaration a pandemic-era spike in “all mental health emergencies including suspected suicide attempts” among children.
The declaration also said pandemic restrictions and the death of loved ones from COVID-19 had “intensified” existing challenges like the “inequities that result from structural racism,” hitting the children of minorities the hardest.
The authors of the JAMA study also pointed to other studies showing a rise in youth suicide rates and teenagers reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness in recent years.
Of the roughly 1 in 5 children who experience mental illness nationwide each year, health experts estimate that half go untreated, they noted.
