"We've never really gotten a good, true diagnosis as to what's going on with her," Pam says. Pam says each facility has suggested a different diagnosis and adjusted Melinda's medication. She's admitted to a psych hospital for a week to 10 days and goes home. Melinda is rushed to an ER where she waits. "Each time, it's the same routine," says Pam. She has therapists, but some of them changed during the pandemic, the visits were virtual, and she hasn't made good connections between crises. Pam says Melinda spiraled downward after a falling out with a close family member last summer. This was Melinda's fourth trip to a hospital emergency room since late November. "Even as the parent - it's very scary."īut this experience is not new. "We occasionally hear screaming, yelling, monitors beeping," says Pam. After she tried to escape one day, doctors told her she could only leave the room to use the bathroom. While those precautions are beginning to ease, demand for beds is not.įor days on end, Melinda sat and slept in this small, windowless room off the ER, waiting for a spot in a hospital psychiatric care unit to open up. COVID-19 precautions turned double rooms into singles or psych units into COVID units. Many parents report spending weeks with their children in hospital hallways or overflow rooms, in various states of distress, because hospital psychiatric units are full. Doctors were keeping her there because they were concerned that she'd harm herself if she left. I met Melinda in early April, on her 12th day in the ER. At one point, Melinda, who was overwhelmed, tried to escape, was restrained, injected with drugs to calm her, and moved to a small, windowless room. Melinda spent her first 10 days in a hospital lecture hall with a dozen other children, on gurneys, separated by curtains because the emergency room had run out of space. "This is really unlike anything we've ever seen before, and it doesn't show any signs of abating," says Lisa Lambert, executive director of Parent/Professional Advocacy League, which pushes for more mental health care for children. Shots - Health News How A Hospital And A School District Teamed Up To Help Kids In Emotional Crisis Parents and advocates for kids' mental health say the ER can't provide appropriate care and that the warehousing of kids in crisis can become an emergency itself. But sometimes if your brain is not well, and you end up in an ER, there's a good chance you will get stuck there. If you have a heart attack, you won't wait long for a hospital bed. If you break an arm, it gets set, and you leave. Right now in Massachusetts, in many parts of the U.S, and the world, demand for mental health care overwhelms supply, creating bottlenecks like Melinda's 17-day saga.Įmergency rooms are not typically places you check in for the night. NPR has agreed to use only the first names for this teenager and her mother, Pam, to avoid having this story trail the family online. Melinda, like a growing number of children during the pandemic, had become increasingly anxious and depressed as she spent more time away from in-person contact at school, church and her singing lessons.
EMTs arrived at the home north of Boston, helped calm the 13-year-old, and took her to an emergency room. Her daughter, she said, was threatening to kill herself.
One evening in late March, a mom called 911. She was only allowed to use her phone an hour a day in the ER her mom visited daily, bringing books and special foods. After experiencing a suicidal crisis earlier this year, Melinda, a Massachusetts 13-year-old, was forced to remain 17 days in the local hospital's emergency room while she waited for a space to open up at a psychiatric treatment facility.
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