Psychiatric ER visits among young people increase by nearly 30 percent

Emergency room visits for psychiatric reasons have risen nearly 30 percent in people ages 6-24, according to a new report. Looking at data between 2011 and 2015, researchers found even larger spikes among adolescent patients (54 percent) and Hispanic patients (91 percent). Suicide-related visits more than doubled among adolescents, and despite the increase, fewer than 40 percent met with a mental health specialist. “This study unmistakably reveals that adolescents are a population with urgent mental health needs,” the authors write. One caveat: The authors acknowledge that diagnostic criteria could have varied among different providers, and therefore could have limited how the people in the study were diagnosed.