Column: Mental health in children

Omaha’s Chief Information Officer shares the stories and people who make a *** difference in our community. This is the KE TV News Watch Seven column. Hello. I am Joey Sakic. Thanks for join us. This is K TV News Watch Seven Chronicle. Today we take a closer look at the mental health of our children. There is a great need but also an ever growing awareness. Local doctors, philanthropists and social workers are champions in finding solutions. We know the need for mental health services has increased since the pandemic, reflecting national trends. The metro faces a *** shortage of professionals who can help. We investigated roadblocks, putting our children at risk and why more resources are sorely needed. *** Attention. This story is about suicide and can be upsetting for some. The Jimenez family party table will never feel the same again. It’s gonna be really hard. Just by going to my mom’s house and knowing he wasn’t there in October, 16-year-old Reuben committed suicide. I love it. I don’t think I will ever love him or stop thinking about him. He was the youngest of six children, the only boy, two of his sisters, Sarah and Sabrina say he was shy but sensitive and above all. Disinterested. He didn’t ask for anything, but he gave you everything you could have needed. But Rubin had bravely asked for help. He spoke to my parents. I think it was about *** week before he disappeared. He told her he wanted to go to therapy. He had already been in therapy. But this time, his sisters say it was *** months before he could get a date. And it was during this month Ruben and made his life if you have a *** physical illness and you go to the hospital you get help and they help you right away when you have a *** * mental crisis, you don’t get that help right away. Is it a *** crisis in that people need help and they can’t get it. Youth psychologist Dr Connie Snows says wait times for her office are around two months after they topped three months late last year, according to the Watch Seven TV survey. She and her colleagues stopped taking referrals outside of Boystown for services. But again we have the problem of can you get them? And there’s a six-month wait for psychiatrists prescribing drugs that put pediatricians like Michael Dawson on the front lines. Sometimes that means dealing with RSV and other times it means dealing with his *** burden, proud if not fully prepared to bear it. I can help with some of these things. But as things get more complex, that’s when I start asking for more help. Dawson says about 50% of visits to the pediatrician have something to do with mental or behavioral health. If your child has a *** behavior problem, you often don’t know where to start in a *** crisis. The emergency room is often that first stop between 2019 and 2021. Children’s hospitals report ***42% increase in visits for self-harm and suicide attempts or ideations in children in just ages 5-18. The other way to think about this crisis is Do we have enough mental health care providers? The answer to that is that there are no inpatient beds for kids with mental health crises on the subway. The boys’ town doctors say it can sometimes happen that in the days leading up to their admission they receive much-needed care. I would go to the hospital and stay there for 89 hours waiting for a *** bed and sometimes they didn’t even have any beds. They keep us in the extra side rooms. Like her brother, Sara Jimenez struggled with depression as a *** teenager. She is shocked at how little change. I feel like we’ve come so far in the 12 years since I went through issues like this that I don’t understand how there aren’t more resources available right now. New tools are on the table. *** a recent recommendation directs pediatricians to screen patients ages 6-18 for depression and anxiety. It’s a suitable place for us to talk to the kids and they trust us and will open up to us. But that begs the question. If more children are diagnosed, that will help them land on their feet. I felt like he should have been able to get more help he needed for the kids who were waiting to get that help. Remember this from someone who’s been there, you don’t seek attention, you don’t overreact, you’re not just a *** kid, you matter. And I think more kids need to hear these powerful words. There are more organizations in the metro working to expand access to mental health services. One of them is the Mental Health Innovation Foundation, which is raising money for an $89 million behavioral wellness center. They’re building it on the Children’s Hospital campus. Last month, we spoke with Foundation leaders about the void they hope to fill. O maha 103,000 square feet of progress. It’s a great gift for this community. The new behavioral health and wellness center here at Omaha Children’s Hospital will have 38 inpatient beds, more than double the current number on the Metro. This means children can stay in our state for treatment. It’s going to be transformational Chanda Shah Khan is CEO of Children’s, but the new facility is the brainchild of philanthropist Ken Stinson’s Mental Health Innovation Foundation. My instinct tells me that people really understand the problem and that it is a complex problem to solve. Part of the solution he hopes for comes in the form of this facility which will also have *** first of its kind assessment center, *** first stop for families in need, I think we were considerably in lag in terms of facilities to care for young children and so many young children are struggling. It can’t come soon enough. The number of young people ages 10-19 committing suicide has steadily increased in Nebraska since 2009. How is the community ***? Let’s do the right thing for the children in our community that not only gives that child a better future, but also gives us as a *** state a better *** future as well. To raise nearly nine million children, 90 million contribute up to 15 million and 16 others are expected from Arpa funds. The rest of the donations collected by Stinson’s nonprofit. To date, he says, no one has said no to a *** project he considers invaluable. We have a long way to go, but I think we have a very good start. Next on KTV News watch Sevens Chronicle here from the children’s thrift institute on how the conversation about mental health and children has changed in recent years and with the future of health care looks like

Column: Mental health in children

We take a closer look at the mental health issues affecting children in our community and how providers are trying to fill the gaps.

Updated: 10:15 a.m. CST December 11, 2022

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