Lack of Mental Health Care Options Leaves Patients Stranded

The Washington Post has a story about a ten-year old boy stuck in the hospital because of the lack of appropriate mental health care options.

He spends his days locked in a psychiatric ward at Children’s National Medical Center in the District because he stabbed his cousin in the eye with a pencil and has said he wants to kill himself. He has been violent, depressed, and a danger to himself and others…

His emergency treatment has long since run its course, and the boy — identified in court papers only as “L.F.” — now finds himself the subject of a maddening bureaucratic trap: He needs ongoing help but has nowhere to go.

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Such situations are common across the country, including here in Georgia.  Last year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the case of a suicidal patient who waited three and one-half days to be admitted to a psychiatric care facility from a hospital emergency department:

On June 5, hours after Richard’s suicide attempt, an emergency room doctor committed him to a state psychiatric hospital. He was, as a counselor said, “a suicidal, wanting-to-die patient.”

But no beds were available in the state hospital that day. Or the next day. Or the day after that. It wasn’t until June 8 — 82 hours after Richard’s commitment — that a crisis unit in Cobb County accepted him.

(read more)

Though the state is working under a consent decree with the Federal government to improve its mental health care system, significant gaps remain.