Child Mental Health Care Needs Are High—and Many Families Still Struggle to Get Help

Due to recent research evidence that will likely lead to additional scrutiny of child mental health services in the United States, there is growing concern about children and families being unable to access the necessary services today. In a study highlighted on EurekAlert! earlier this month, almost 25% (or approximately 24.8%) of surveyed parents whose children were perceived to need professional care for emotional or behavioral issues, reported their child’s needs had not been met.

In addition to the foregoing, 16.6% of parents surveyed who had reported that their child needed professional care for emotional or behavioral issues experienced challenges accessing services, due to long wait lists, a lack of providers or availability of professionals, cost of care or insurance restrictions. For approximately 20% of families surveyed whose children reported difficulty accessing mental health services, these barriers to accessing care were determined to be the primary cause their child did not receive care.

Many clinicians (those providing child mental health services) see similar statistics on an ongoing basis. Clinicians often describe the experience of having children wait months to be evaluated, parents trying to balance their job requirements, family obligations, and transportation to reach distant specialists, and underfunded school-based services attempting to fill the gaps in mental health services to children. In a number of geographic regions there is a shortage of child psychiatrists or therapists trained to provide evidence-based treatment, putting extra demands on pediatricians and school counselors, who have less time/more responsibility than they can safely manage.

Advocacy groups are asking for the state and federal government to treat mental health services for children as a fundamental pediatric service, with the development of increased insurance coverage, stronger enforcement of mental health parity laws, and continued funding to expand community-based and school-based services to provide access to care.

Source: EurekAlert! – “US child mental health care need, unmet needs, and difficulty accessing care”