More than 160 million Americans live in areas with a shortage of mental health professionals. The shortage is even worse for providers who treat children.
Dr. Rachel Petersen-Nguyen, a paediatrician at Children’s Minnesota in St. Paul, offers one possible solution, and it starts with doctors like her.
“Every day I see kids, we’re helping with mental health issues,” she said.
She believes the situation was particularly bad during the lockdown period of the pandemic.
“I saw children with suicidal thoughts more than once a day. I was seeing younger kids than I’ve ever seen with suicidal ideation,” Petersen-Nguyen said.
But it’s still a very present situation for families right now. Nearly a third of Minnesota students struggle with long-term mental health problems, according to the state’s student survey last year.
“I’d like to be able to refer everyone to a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I can’t. If I refer them, they sometimes wait two months, six months or two years to see someone,” she explained.
To help alleviate the severe shortage of mental health providers, Dr Petersen-Nguyen believes that paediatricians can learn to diagnose and treat common conditions such as ADHD, anxiety and depression in their own offices without having to refer. She works with the REACH Institute, a nonprofit that trains providers and hospital systems.
Although mental health wasn’t a big part of primary care training 10 or 20 years ago, she said it’s not too late to change that.
“If we can be confident in that diagnosis and start that treatment, we can often help children and families pretty quickly. And then that frees up space and time for mental health professionals to see the kids who are more complicated,” she explained.
State data show that 80 percent of Minnesota’s counties are designated as having a mental health professional shortage.
