Emerging pediatric mental health urgent care centers offer a crucial bridge between outpatient services and emergency room visits for youth in crisis.
- Brighter Days Pediatric Mental Health Urgent Care Center in Rochester, New York, offers rapid assessment, crisis intervention, and short-term stabilization for children and adolescents experiencing mental health crises.
- Similar walk-in facilities are emerging in nearly a dozen states, providing a crucial bridge between traditional outpatient services and emergency room visits for youth in psychiatric emergencies.
- The surge in youth mental health visits to emergency departments during the pandemic has highlighted the need for specialized urgent care centers for this population.
- Some in the mental health community find the label "urgent" misleading as these centers do not conduct involuntary holds or handle severe cases, but rather provide crisis de-escalation and referrals to long-term care.
- Challenges at these centers include staffing shortages of trained mental health professionals and the nationwide shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists.
Source link
Psychiatry & Mental Health, Pediatrics, Public Health & Prevention