Hundreds of thousands of kids with mental health needs aren't receiving necessary help

SEATTLE (TND) — With children now back in school, there's growing attention to an invisible and ongoing threat to their health and safety. Leading health experts agree U.S. children are facing a mental health crisis, and new data suggests the country is lagging behind when it comes to meeting young people's urgent needs.

Seattle mom Stephanie Simpson will never forget the extreme measures she had to take to keep her child safe as he struggled with his mental health. Her son was just 9 years old, a third-grader, when he started developing symptoms, including debilitating headaches, and eventually suicidal thoughts.

To prevent him from harming himself, Stephanie was forced to hide her kitchen knives in a lockbox.

At one point, Stephanie rushed her son to the emergency room, desperate to understand what was happening. An exact diagnosis would take nearly a year. Her son was suffering from OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"It's a tremendous amount of work to figure out what's going on with your child because there aren't really good resources," Stephanie told Spotlight on America.

Finding the right treatment would be another battle.

Stephanie tried to find the right options, but each time, she was faced with an extreme wait time.

The wait list was six months," said Stephanie. "Both my husband and I felt if we waited that long, we would have lost our child's life."

Mental health needs are soaring. A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicinerevealed that in 2020, almost one in five adolescents reported having depression; but despite increases in need, there were no "commensurate increases in treatment."

Access to care is a struggle millions of families face as mental health issues in children surge at unprecedented rates.

Dr. Kira Mauseth knows the problem well. She practices at a behavioral health clinic in Everett, Washington, and is a psychology professor at Seattle University.

We don't have the capacity to help," she told us. "There are not enough licensed providers to deal with youth and children in terms of mental health."

Mauseth told Spotlight on America the problem started even before the pandemic — and now, the scale of the need is staggering.

The non-profit Mental Health America found more than 15% of kids nationwide reported suffering one major depressive episode in the last year.

It gets worse when you learn more than 60% of those kids are not receiving any mental health treatment.

Spotlight on America dug into the state-by-state numbers.

• In Texas, the worst-ranked state, 73% of kids with major depression do not have access to treatment. That's 255,000 children.
• In South Carolina, 67% of kids receive no care.
• In Virginia, it's 55%.
• The best-ranked state was Maine, but even there, nearly one-third of kids in need aren't receiving the help they need.

To see the full breakdown of how states fared, click here.

Solving the problem requires multiple solutions, Mauseth said.

The first part is getting more people interested in the profession by raising awareness about the seriousness of the issue.

The other is providing training to those who aren't professionals by involving community members, relatives and friends in the conversation.

"You can ask someone who you're concerned about, about suicidal ideation or how they're thinking if they're gonna hurt themselves and provide support, get them the professional help that they need and not be afraid to enter into that conversation," she said.

In the meantime, she offered suggestions for how parents can start conversations with their kids about mental health, and what to do if their child is in crisis. You can see her full answers in the video below.

We asked Dr. Mauseth what would happen if the current statistics continue.

"On the most extreme end of things, it could be a significant increase in suicide risk," she told us. "It could include things like substance use, addiction development, violent or aggressive behavior, so it's a spectrum of potential problematic outcomes, but there are some pretty significant consequences at the extreme end."

Stephanie Simpson knows the potential consequences well. After months of work and research, she was able to find the right program for her son's condition, and he is doing well today.

Now that he has stabilized, she's turned her attention to other kids and their families, to make sure they get access to necessary treatment.

She wants other parents to understand that they're not alone.

"Parents don't want to acknowledge that the child is suffering. We can blame it on a lot of different things, or we can look at the facts and that these are medical conditions," she said.

She's lobbying on state and federal levels to ensure the government covers behavioral and mental health needs for families like hers, so no child has to struggle to find and afford help when they need it most.

"If I can help one other kiddo get access to help because their parent goes 'oh my goodness, I can see my child in that story,' then it's worthwhile," she told us.

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There is a big question remaining. How do we make sure there are enough resources for kids in mental health crises? Experts say there's a need for more funding and more attention from local and national leaders. On the next Spotlight on America report, we press a member of Congress about what else can be done. That story comes out Monday, September 26.

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Dr. Kira Mauseth founded Astrum Health, an organization that focuses on training and education in the realm of psychology. For more information, click here. Through the Washington State Dept. of Health, she's also authored an informational toolkit to help educators and families understand the mental health needs of kids, especially in the wake of the COVID pandemic. You can read it here.