No Vacancy: How a Shortage of Mental Health Beds Keeps Kids Trapped Inside ERs
One evening in late March, a mom called 911. Her daughter, she said, was threatening to kill herself. EMTs arrived at the home north of Boston, helped calm the 13-year-old, and took her to an emergency room.
Melinda, like a growing number of children during the covid-19 pandemic, had become increasingly anxious and depressed as she spent more time away from in-person contact at school, church and her singing lessons. Read more ›
For the past 15 months, we’ve been carefully following safety protocols, and strict mandates have helped inform our decisions. Now, as we come out of our COVID caves, the rules are more ambiguous and varying comfort levels collide. It can create a whole new wave of anxiety around what feels safe, especially when our precautions don’t match those around us.
At its heart, 
The University of Washington on Friday announced that the School of Social Work and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and the Behavioral Health Institute at Harborview Medical Center are part of a transformational $38 million set of gifts from Ballmer Group to support a broad, collaborative response to the state’s behavioral health crisis. 
As the nation’s leading expert on psychiatric disorders in children and the leading researcher on the effects of psychiatric drugs on kids, Dr. Glen Elliott says that doctors and even teachers are too quick to recommend medicating young minds rather than taking the necessary steps to find out if drugs are even necessary. Dr. Elliott’s book, 
As parents, we all want to create a safe, nurturing and stable home for our families. And the collective, cumulative trauma of the past year has made it harder than ever. So it makes sense that we might turn to trauma-informed parenting, often utilized by foster parents or those whose children have experienced trauma, for ideas. 
Collective trauma refers to the psychological and emotional distress experienced by a group of people or a community as a result of a shared traumatic event or series of events.
If your child or teen is struggling with communication, behavior or relationships, or no longer wants to participate in things that they used to enjoy, it may be time to seek help. How do you convince them that it’s time to take that step? And what can you expect when you get there?
