Bill Seeks to Rectify Shortage Of Child MH Clinicians

Legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives and Senate last month to create financial incentives for medical students and residents to become child psychiatrists and for child psychiatry training programs to increase their recruitment and enrollment, according to an action alert from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

The Child Health Care Crisis Relief Act would provide similar financial incentives and educational support for individuals to become child mental health professionals, defined by the bill as psychologists, school psychologists, psychiatric nurses, school social workers, marriage and family therapists, school counselors, and professional counselors.

Reps. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) introduced the legislation in the House, and Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced identical legislation (S 537) in the Senate.

“Anyone who has a child with mental illness has horror stories about scrambling to find a clinician who can see their child in less than a few months,” Kennedy said in a press release from his office.

“We wind up with our young people in emergency rooms, in jail, or, worst of all, victims of suicide because treatment is delayed.”

One incentive the legislation offers to physicians to become child psychiatrists is a federal loan-forgiveness program. The federal government would repay part or all of a physician's graduate medical education loans on the condition that the physician, upon completing the child psychiatry residency training or fellowship, would work full time treating children who meet the priority criteria established by the legislation.

Those criteria refer to children with a significantly higher than average rate of serious emotional disturbances, children who come from racial or ethnic minorities, and children who live in urban or rural areas with shortages of child psychiatrists and child mental health professionals.

Bingaman underscored the tremendous need for child and adolescent psychiatrists to serve in rural areas during his introductory remarks in the March 7 Congressional Record.

“As of June 2003, there were only 13 licensed child and adolescent psychiatrists to serve the entire state [of New Mexico], which has an estimated 56,000 children and adolescents with a mental or emotional disorder,” said Bingaman.

To address national and local shortages, the legislation would also increase the number of residents in child psychiatry by extending Medicare reimbursement for graduate medical education for two years after general psychiatry training, according to the AACAP Action Alert.

The legislation, which was first introduced in the 107th Congress and reintroduced last year, would cost $45 million annually from Fiscal 2006 through Fiscal 2010 if enacted.

The Child Healthcare Crisis Relief Act can be accessed online at<thomas.loc.gov> by searching on the bill name or number, HR 1106 or S 537. ▪