Referrals to Pediatric Mental Health Care Access programs increased during pandemic
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Referrals from primary care providers to Pediatric Mental Health Care Access programs rose and involved more complex mental health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to study results.
Lead author Amie F. Bettencourt, PhD, of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and co-author Dustin E. Sarver, PhD, of the department of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and colleagues reported these findings in Psychiatric Services.
“We had known at that time that the COVID-19 pandemic was putting strain on the mental health of kids and on the mental health system,” Sarver told Healio Psychiatry. “One novel model to bring mental health care directly into the medical home and to increase access to behavioral health services is through peer-to-peer clinical consultation, education and resource-referral programs called Pediatric Mental Health Care Access (PMHCAs). Given that these programs are relatively new, we were interested in learning if pediatric primary care providers were using PMHCAs to help meet the mental health needs of children.”
The researchers compared service trends of Maryland and Mississippi PHMCA programs, which had 2,840 contacts with primary care providers between January 2019 and March 2021. Specifically, they analyzed descriptive trends on PHMCA program utilization, service type, clinical severity, diagnostic complexity and primary care provider contact reasons.
Results showed call volume increased significantly at both programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers noted increases in calls related to patients with multiple diagnoses and patients with mood and anxiety symptoms.
“The trends we found in this study across two different PMHCA programs are in line with other recent research highlighting the increased mental health needs of children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic and also provide further support for the recent declaration of a national emergency in children’s mental health made by the AAP, AACAP and the Children’s Hospital Association,” Bettencourt said. “Further, our findings highlight the important role that PMHCA programs can play in helping to meet these growing mental health needs.”