There's not enough mental health care for WV teens • West Virginia Watch

You know this story. A young girl was found dead on a bathroom floor, “emaciated to the point of being skeletal.” Family members have been charged with child neglect resulting in death. A government system continues to prevent the media from getting answers. The governor says he's open to a special session to review homeschooling policies to close gaps in the safety net so no more children fall through the cracks.

But for a moment, forget this story and remember the girl.

Kyneddi Miller was 14 years old. From what we learned from criminal complaint, her family members believed she had suffered from an eating disorder for years. They detailed “clear and distinct physical problems” that left her unable to physically function on her own for nearly a week before her death.

Family members said she had only gone outside twice in four years and had not been to school since 2020.

According to information provided According to Governor Jim Justice's chief of staff, state agents went to Kyneddi's home in 2023 because a distant relative had called and expressed concern that she had not been seen in public for some time. Kyneddi told one of the soldiers that she was afraid of COVID-19 and did not want to be around the others.

While the past few months have been filled with horrific facts about child abuse and our state's broken child welfare system, there is this quiet story of a broken girl struggling with mental illness.

And the question remains: Even if her mother had sought the health care she needed, would she have gotten it?

Across the country, there is a mental health crisis among teenage girls. According to CDC data 2023nearly three in five teenage girls felt constantly sad or hopeless in 2021. That's twice as many as that of teenage boys.

Across the country, emergency room visits by adolescent girls have increased during the pandemic, up 22% in second year of pandemicwhile visits from teenagers have decreased.

According to the researchers, this increase was associated with an increase in suicidal and self-harming behaviors as well as eating disorders.

Here at home, during the second year of the pandemic, more than 3,000 children went to the West Virginia University Medicine emergency room for mental health care. In 2019, the number was just over 2,000. This represents a 62% increase in the number of children seeking emergency mental health care at WVU Medicine hospitals as the network added eight hospital rooms. emergency during this period.

As any healthcare professional will tell you, most emergency rooms are no place for a child in a mental health crisis. No emergency room in West Virginia provides mental health care to adolescents. They keep children in limbo for hours, days, and even weeks until a mental health care facility can accommodate them, which may be hours away, or until parents give up and take them home, often resulting in a call to the child. protective services.

This lack of community mental health services has plagued our state over the past decade. Nine years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice investigated the system and reported their findings to then-Governor Tomblin in a letter which read, in part:

“We conclude that West Virginia is failing to provide services to children with significant mental health problems in the most integrated and appropriate settings for their needs, in violation of the [Americans with Disabilities Act]. The state has unnecessarily separated thousands of children, away from their families and other important people in their lives. With adequate services, the state could successfully care for these children in their homes and communities. The systemic failure to expand essential mental health services in the home and community also places children with mental health problems currently living in the community at risk of unnecessary institutionalization.

This lack of community mental health services is why hundreds of children in foster care in West Virginia ending up in out-of-state care or psychiatric hospitals — because the State does not know where to put them.

I'm pretty familiar with this issue because I've seen it all unfold. Ten years ago, I helped write and defend legislation create a state strategic plan to improve adolescent mental health care in our state. The bill stalled in the Senate Finance House because the state Department of Health and Human Resources slapped it with a $50,000 tax bill to pay one of its employees overseeing the work.

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee refused to place the bill on the agenda because of the fiscal note.

I've been thinking a lot about this bill lately, and about where our state is today, dealing with the health care crisis that took Kyneddi's life, if the legislature had only given sufficient priority to children's health to commit $50,000 to improve it.

As this story continues to unfold, as journalists search for answers, and as state leaders seek some sort of solution to put all of this aside, we cannot forget that at the heart of this great story is a little girl who needed mental health care. I care about it and I don't understand it. Now is the time to make our broken mental health care system and its tangled relationship with the child welfare and foster care systems a legislative priority. It's time to work hard and invest resources.