Pediatric ER Sees High Mental Illness Numbers

Three of every four children whose mothers bring them to a pediatric emergency department for nonurgent complaints screen positive for mental illness, according to a new Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center study.

The study has important implications for ensuring that children and their families do not fall through the mental health safety net, according to Jacqueline Grupp-Phelan, M.D., the study’s main author. Grupp-Phelan, an emergency medicine physician at the hospital, presented the study at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Baltimore in May.

Screening positive for a mental health disorder does not necessarily mean that these children have a mental illness but that they are “at high risk of serious mental health issues,” said Grupp-Phelan. “The pediatric emergency department [ED] may be the only interaction mothers have with a health care provider. If we do not take advantage of the ED visit to identify and treat families with mental health problems, these children may fall through the cracks.”

Grupp-Phelan found that 25 percent of children screened positive for four or more mental health disorders. In addition, 18 percent of mothers screened positive for either anxiety or depression. Among these mothers, 92 percent of their children screened positive for a mental health disorder, she said.

To conduct the study, she administered a validated mental health screening test over a two-year period to 600 mothers and their children who visited the emergency department at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for nonurgent complaints. In a previous study, Grupp-Phelan administered a mental health screening test only to mothers and found that a large percentage of mothers with mental illness find it difficult to take care of their children.