Their trade association, the Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems, is preparing legislation that would require the state to pay the full cost of keeping each stuck child in the hospital and would charge that cost to the state agency responsible. Local children who desperately need anti-depressant drugs routinely wait four to eight weeks to see a child psychiatrist who can prescribe the medication. From top to bottom, the state's mental health system for children is bursting at the seams, making young patients and their families wait unconscionably long for services, if they can get them at all, say pediatricians, psychiatrists and top state officials. Shortages plague every level of the pediatric mental health system, from therapists to foster homes, said Sudder and others in the field. Add to that an increasing need for services and more seriously ill children, psychiatrists said.
Kids seem to have more difficulties.
There's a greater sense of hopelessness. Emerging as one of the worst problems is finding community programs for children leaving psychiatric hospitals, doctors said. Pembroke Westwood Health System, the largest children's psychiatric hospital in the state, is keeping 25 percent to 35 percent of its young patients longer than they need, said chief executive Dr. Kenneth Davis. Pembroke Westwood operates 70 beds for children at Westwood Lodge, Pembroke Hospital and in Lowell. The lack of community-based programs has made matters worse, said Richard Sheola, head of the Massachusetts Behavioral Health Partnership, which provides mental health services for 500,000poor adults and children in the state's MassHealth program.