A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that the youth health crisis in the US appears to be improving. CBS News.
The improvement was noted in last fall’s data as there were more ER visits last year than this year.
The data released by the CDC is an early sign that mental health deterioration and suicide attempts among adult patients, especially adolescents, may be declining across the country.
However, the CDC data also showed that the average number of emergency room visits per week was high compared to the fall before the 2019 pandemic.
The authors of the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report stated: “These findings suggest some improvement, beginning in the fall of 2022, in the adolescent mental and behavioral health trajectory as measured by emergency health visits.”
The findings were drawn from the CDC’s National Syndrome Surveillance Program, which collected data from 3 of 4 emergency departments nationwide.
A previous CDC study on ER provided an early warning ahead of other benchmarks to track America’s youth mental health crisis that began before COVID.
“The untold death toll in the pandemic era, a pervasive sense of fear, economic instability and enforced physical distancing from loved ones, friends and society have exacerbated the unprecedented stress young people are already facing,” Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy wrote in the 2021 Crisis Advice.
However, the agency also warned that “these results are limited to emergency departments, which provide insight into only a subset of the mental health problems adolescents face.”
Other factors could be contributing to the improvement in those numbers, according to the CDC: Governments have invested in efforts such as the 988 hotline, which has received thousands of calls and messages since 2022.
Goal 988 is to keep patients from going to emergency rooms and provide them with behavioral health care outside of emergency hospitals.
Source: La Opinion
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