Citation

Tolliver M, Hostutler CA. Fam. Syst. Health 2022; 40(3): 305-311.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Families, Systems and Health)

DOI

10.1037/fsh0000733

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The nation is facing a pediatric mental health crisis that is years in the making. The pandemic potentiated the crisis by isolating youth and compounding family stressors. In response, the US Surgeon General issued an advisory in late 2021 recommending actions that health care and other sectors should take to improve youth well-being. Integrated care has a critical role to play in both implementing and moving beyond the Surgeon General's recommendations. The Collaborative Family Healthcare Association's Pediatric Special Interest Group (SIG) meets monthly to provide support and learning experiences and to promote dissemination of innovations to address the pediatric mental health crisis. In this article, we share recommendations, informed by the conversations in the CHFA Pediatric SIG, to propel the Surgeon General's advice into actions. We prioritize and emphasize structural changes that are needed in the health care system and highlight practical and actionable steps individual providers can take to increase cross sector collaboration.

Our youth are in crisis, and it started long before the COVID-19 pandemic. As leaders within the Pediatrics Special Interest group in the nation's leading integrated care organization (Collaborative Family Healthcare Association [CFHA]), it is critically important for us to underscore the severity of this crisis and the need for action. Youth Risk Behavior Survey data show that youth mental health significantly worsened from 2009 to 2019. In a typical classroom of 30 high school students in the year before the pandemic, 11 would be experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, around 6 seriously considering attempting suicide, and around 3 attempted suicide (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). The suicide rate among young people increased by 47% between 2007 and 2018 (Curtin, 2020) and is in the top three leading causes of death for youth aged 10 to 19 (National Vital Statistics System, 2020a, 2020b). Dr. John Ackerman (Nationwide Children's, 2018) put the enormity of youth suicide into context by explaining that, prior to the pandemic, the number of deaths from youth suicide was the equivalent to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 occurring every 18 months...

Language: en