The Beacon Kansas City: More KC schoolkids are asking for help with their mental health. A few are finding it
By Suzanne King
Melvin White sits with his generation at a demographic Ground Zero for mental stress.
The Schlagle High School junior survived COVID isolation during middle school. He’s never known a world without smartphones. And he’s finishing high school amid the FOMO energy of a social media world in its own adolescence.
All of those factors, experts say, put Melvin and his classmates at the center of uncharted ground for mental health. It has psychiatric professionals worried about suicides for the most troubled kids and recognizing serious problems among more kids than have been recorded before.
Melvin is one of the lucky ones. He got a spot in his school’s Becoming a Man, or BAM program, which teaches middle and high school students how to process trauma, deal with anger, interact with friends and set goals. Its counterpart for girls is Working on Womanhood, or WOW.
Children’s Mercy Hospital has seen a 67% increase in referrals for mental health services since 2017. Only 166 psychiatric beds for children and adolescents exist within 45 minutes of Kansas City, and those beds aren’t available to some patients who have other medical conditions or certain neurodevelopmental disorders.
The hospital estimates that between 40% and 50% of kids who need mental health care in the Kansas City area may go untreated.
Last summer, Children’s Mercy announced a $150 million fundraising campaign to put more money into the problem. Among other things, the hospital is working to embed mental health professionals in schools and pediatrician practices, add psychiatric beds for kids and open an outpatient facility that can serve kids who need mental health services in a school-like setting.
That will be a start, said Dr. Bob Batterson, who leads the hospital’s Developmental and Behavioral Health division. But COVID left an enormous need where there was already a growing void, he said.
“There is no true health care without mental health care,” Batterson said. “It all is one package.”
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