North Carolina is among the bottom 10 states in the country when it comes to investment in child and adolescent mental health services — 42 out of 50 to be exact, said Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, chair of the psychiatry department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in a recent interview.

To address this issue, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services recently reached out to UNC Health with a proposal for partnership. UNC Health eagerly accepted, and the partners are currently renovating an existing state-operated facility to create a new inpatient psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents in Butner, North Carolina.

The new hospital is slated to open its doors sometime in late summer, and then it will scale its operations over the next year to serve 54 inpatient beds, Dr. Meltzer-Brody said.

North Carolina’s health department struck this partnership with UNC Health because action is desperately needed to increase access to youth mental health services. Mental Health America’s 2023 key findings show that 60% percent of American youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment. This is especially concerning as the acuity of mental health problems among young people continues to grow.

“The youth mental health crisis, where it stands now, is the worst that has ever been recorded,” Dr. Meltzer-Brody declared. “At this point, we see unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression among children and adolescents. We see extraordinarily high levels of suicide, which is now the second leading cause of death in youth — which is incredibly worrisome.”

There has been significant reportage — both in the mainstream and healthcare-centric media — about the widespread negative impact that pandemic-era trauma and social isolation has had on young people’s mental health. These unfortunate trends have exacerbated the state of mental health among the American youth, which was already in a pretty dire place before the pandemic began, Dr. Meltzer-Brody pointed out.

As children and teens struggle more and more with mental health conditions, the U.S. still lacks sufficient resources to address the situation. In fact, a Northwestern Medicine study published last month found a significant link between the country’s shortage of mental health professionals and the rise in youth suicides.

“Insufficient resources make it very, very difficult for families when they have a child who is struggling with a mental health issue. It’s very difficult to get help — primary care providers and pediatricians are overwhelmed. There’s not enough mental health providers right now to take care of our youth. So it can take a very long time to get care. And if you need inpatient care for safety, there is a huge shortage of beds both nationally and in North Carolina,” Dr. Meltzer-Brody said.

UNC Health’s new youth psychiatric hospital is seeking to give families in the state access to mental health services that are tailored to the unique needs of children and adolescents. 

Freestanding hospitals dedicated entirely to child and adolescent psychiatric beds are not common, Dr. Meltzer-Brody pointed out. Typically, these types of beds will be in a unit that is part of a larger mental health hospital. But the country needs more facilities dedicated to youth mental health if it wants to effectively address the mental health crisis affecting young people, she said.

“The needs of kids and adolescents are specialized — they’re not just adults that are smaller,”  Dr. Meltzer-Brody said. “When you’re talking about kids and adolescents, you’re talking about coordinating care with families, with parents, with how this intersects with school. And the onset of illness, how it presents and the treatments can differ dramatically depending on the age group. So you have to have specialized care and specialists that understand the complexity and the nuances associated with taking care of young people.”

That’s why having specialized clinicians and staff members who have expertise in taking care of youth and interacting with families is so important, she declared.

Since it formed its partnership with the state health department, UNC Health has gone on a hiring blitz to staff its hospital with the appropriate personnel. This includes doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nursing staff, mental health technicians, food service staff and janitorial workers, Dr. Meltzer-Brody said.

She thinks all health systems “have an obligation to do their part” when it comes to the youth mental health crisis. 

“Having unprecedented levels of suicide in this age group is so horrific, and I think that it’s going to take a multifaceted, full-on, societal response to turn the tide right. We need more mental health professionals in schools because that’s where kids are. We need community-based support, and we need to go after better prevention efforts. But we also need health systems to make it a priority and something they invested in. I think we all need to be doing our part,” Dr. Meltzer-Brody declared. 

Photo: SDI Productions, Getty Images