Most people know the pandemic had a major impact on mental health. What many do not know is that youth mental health was declining in the decade before the pandemic. According to a Healthline.com article, a September report from Clarify Health Institute called “The Kids Are Not Alright: Pediatric Mental Health Care Utilization from 2016 – 2021” is shining a light on mental health trends for kids and teens.

In the report, Clarify Health analyzed data from 20 million American youth (1-19 years old) from 2016-2021. Some key findings follow:

• The use of mental health services increased dramatically. Emergency room visits were up 20% during this time period.
• Inpatient admissions shot up 61%.
• Tweens were hit especially hard by mental health issues. Inpatient admissions increased by 64% for girls and 68% for boys, as opposed to 7% for boys ages 1 to 11.
• Young teen girls fared worst of all. After the advent of the pandemic, in 2021, “utilization of mental health services for girls who were 12 to 15 years old were 2.5 times higher than for their male peers in the same age range.”
• Emergency department rates in 2021 were “nearly twice as high in the Medicaid population” compared to “children with commercial insurance,”according to a press release.

According to Dr. Jack Turban, Assistant Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCSF, there is a “major shortage of pediatric mental health providers.” Even for those who have medical insurance, problems abound. Insurers reimburse medical providers at low rates for mental health care, so many medical providers do not take insurance. “Pediatric mental healthcare is not affordable without using insurance, meaning that many go without care,” Turban said.

He further explained that families report calling “‘every listed in-network’ pediatric mental health provider under their insurance plan, only to be told that none of them are taking on new patients,” an issue known as “phantom networks,” or “inaccurate provider lists that fail to connect people to the care they need.”

Read the article here.

Read the full report here.

CASSY is committed to bringing down barriers to mental health care, providing on-campus, professional mental health services to students free of charge.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash