Connecticut agencies are offering new resources to help teens struggling with their mental health and state leaders wanted to draw attention to it on Thursday during National Children’s Mental Health Day.
You can get help for your child by speaking with your child’s school counselors, calling your pediatrician, or dialing 211, according to Dr. Melissa Santos, the division head of pediatric psychology at Connecticut Children’s.
“Oftentimes parents are Googling or trying to find just resources online and trying to make their best bet. 211 is a great resource for helping you narrow down what you’re finding,” said Santos.
Through calling 211, the state already has 24/7 Mobile Crisis Units that can respond to teens in need of help across Connecticut.
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The Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) also plans to open Urgent Crisis Centers in Waterbury, Hartford, New London and New Haven throughout the summer. It will be like walking into an urgent care and the centers will offer mental health support, according to Michael Williams, the DCF deputy commissioner.
Connecticut Children’s also plans to open a medical psychiatry unit with 12 beds in January that will treat children with medical and psychological concerns. This is in response to the overflow of patients at the height of the pandemic.
“At some points in the pandemic we had kids everywhere in the hospital. In the emergency rooms, in our hallways, in our medical floors, in the outpatient clinic,” Santos said. “We have times that we still have a lot of kids in our emergency department, way more than what we would want, way more than what we want on our hospital floor, so we’re hopeful that as we open up our med psy unit in January and have those beds available, that we’ll have what we know we need in Connecticut which is a true continuum of care where kids can get the right care, at the right time, at the right intensity level for which they need.”
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The American Psychological Association issued a list of 10 recommendations for teen social media use, earlier this week. It recommended social media should be used for social support and community, but teens should have limited exposure to illegal activity, risky behavior, and cyberhate. The APA’s points also discussed parental controls and said teens should be trained in social media literacy before they're allowed to have accounts and adults should monitor those accounts up to age 14.
According to Dr. Santos, children struggled with mental health long before the COVID pandemic started and they are still struggling now.
“In 1991 we started to see a trend of self-reported suicide attempt for black teens ranging up to an 80% increase, 2007 when we started to see a 57% increase in completed suicide for kids, 2009 when we started to see 40% of kids reporting hopelessness, 2011 when we started to see a 28% increase in ED visits for behavior health reasons and suicide was the second leading cause of death for kids starting at the age of 10 and that was all before the pandemic. Our kids were suffering,” Santos said.
The Waterbury Urgent Crisis Center will be the first to open in early June.
