With Nowhere To Turn, More Psychiatric Patients Are Ending Up In The ER

“ERs are the de facto dumping ground for psychiatric patients,” Dr. Renee Hsia, who co-authored a similar study, published in Health Affairs in September, told The Huffington Post. In fact, 80 percent of emergency departments board mental health patients, a figure Hsia referenced in the study.

Aside from taxing health care providers and leading to treatment delays, an overcrowded emergency facility can be especially detrimental to a severely ill psychiatric patient.

“I think most of us can intuitively understand that a chaotic, often windowless environment is not beneficial for these patients,” Dr. Suzanne Lippert, lead study author of the new unpublished research and clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at Stanford University, told The Huffington Post.

“We simply need more resources to support both in-patient care and sufficiently robust outpatient care.” 

This is part of a larger looming crisis for mental health

The situation is even worse for children. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, there are only 8,300 practicing child and adolescent psychiatrists in the country for more than 15 million patients in that age group. And since many of these practitioners are clustered in urban and high-income areas, kids living in rural or low-income areas are even less likely to have mental health care access.