Mental health-related emergency room visits on the rise among children, study finds
(CNN) – Emergency rooms in children’s hospitals are seeing more visits and revisits related to mental health, according to a new study.
The study published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics found that, starting in 2015, mental health visits in pediatric emergency departments increased 8% every year for five years.
About 13% of those patients revisited the hospital within six months.
Researchers say the number of mental health visits that led to a revisit remained stable among patients of all ages, but pediatric mental health revisits increased 6.3% annually.
Researchers called the analysis “concerning.”
The study used data from more than 200,000 patients from 38 children’s hospitals in the U.S.
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