Chris Leonard, MSW, LCSW, host of Conversations About Student Mental Health, talks with XFERALL’s chief clinical officer, Shana Palmieri, LCSW about the crisis in children and adolescents’ mental health and how XFERALL helps schools, mobile crisis teams, and acute hospital ED clinicians place pediatric patients in needed treatment faster.
Emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts among girls were 50.6% greater between February 2021 and March 2021 than they were during the same period in 2019. The increase among boys was 3.7%. At the same time that need is increasing so are wait times. A 2021 study of emergency room visits by youth ages 6 to 17 between 2005 and 2015 found that length of stay increased by 24% for visits lasting more than 6 hours, and 12.7% for visits lasting more than 12 hours. It is no longer uncommon to hear of children and adolescents waiting not just hours, but days, for transfer to appropriate behavioral health treatment.
Since 2019, XFERALL has facilitated the transfer of thousands of children and adolescents experiencing a behavioral health crisis to clinically appropriate inpatient treatment. Our placement time for children and adolescents is less than three hours, compared with the national average conservatively estimated at more than eight hours. We work with hospitals, mobile crisis teams, and school districts to help place children and adolescents in clinically appropriate treatment faster.
Conversations About Student Mental Health is a product of the Thrive Alliance Group. The full interview is available here as well as on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.