Name  : Mega Ernawati

Npm    :12.23.070

Class   : A 4.3

Lesson : Extensive Reading

March 17, 2014

Study: Mental Health Hospitalizations Increasing in Children

By Shannon Firth

Nearly 10 percent of hospitalized children are diagnosed with mental illness, but minority children are frequently overlooked.

Hospitals have charged almost as much to treat children’s depression as they have to treat children’s asthma, a new study says.

More than 4 million American children and adolescents have a mental illness, and a study from the University of California, San Francisco shows mental health hospitalizations among this demographic increased by 24 percent between 2007 and 2010.

The latest findings suggest nearly 1 in 10 hospitalized children have a primary diagnosis of a mental health problem.

"The most important finding is the fact that mental health hospitalizations are so common for kids," Dr. Naomi Bardach, a professor of pediatrics at the UCSF School of Medicine and the study’s lead author, tells U.S. News & World Report. 

[READ: Stigma of Mental Illness Remains Barrier to Treatment]

The study examined the specific mental health reasons for children's hospital stays, and showed that depression, bipolar disorder and psychosis are among the most common conditions associated with mental health hospitalizations. According to the report, hospitals charge nearly as much for treating children who are hospitalized for depression – about $1.33 billion per year – as they do for the inpatient care of children with asthma – about $1.5 billion. 

For the study, researchers analyzed the discharge papers of 3- to 20-year-old patients from two broad-based collections: the Kids' Inpatient Database (KID) and the Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS). Reports from the KID include data from more than 4,100 hospitals in 44 states, but exclude psychiatric hospitals. PHIS is the largest available database of freestanding children’s hospitals and contains records from fewer than 100 hospitals. The majority of the hospitals in the PHIS database are referral centers that treat children with chronic conditions.  

Roughly 10 percent of pediatric hospitalizations from the KID national database and 3 percent of those from freestanding hospitals were due to a primary diagnosis of a mental health condition.         
After expanding the parameters of the data to include hospitalizations with mental illness as a secondary reason as well as a primary diagnosis, the variation between databases was less significant, accounting for 22 percent of KID hospitalizations and about 17 percent of hospitalizations at freestanding pediatric hospitals. 

[ALSO: How Men and Women's Depression Symptoms Differ]

Looking at both databases, patients hospitalized the most tended to be older, male, white and have health insurance. Bardachs says that African-American and Hispanic children are less likely to be diagnosed or hospitalized with a mental illness, even when they report similar symptoms in questionnaires.

"Taken together in both the inpatient and outpatient settings, in general we’re not doing a good enough job of delivering mental health services to minority children," Bardach says.

Bardach says she is not surprised to find patterns of substance abuse among the mentally ill patients in her study. Research on adults suggests that people with mental illness often self-medicate. 

"Using substances can sometimes address some of the symptoms you're experiencing," she says.

As for the study's impact, Bardach says, "It helps us understand where we need to spend our resources to care for kids with mental health diagnoses." The next step, she says, will be to create quality measures that can optimize care for children with mental illness. 

Corrected on March 20, 2014: A previous version of this article incorrectly characterized the percentage and number of children hospitalized with a mental health problem.

Corrected on March 17, 2014: Due to incorrect information in a news release, a previous version of this article incorrectly stated the number of American children with a mental illness. The corrected version also clarifies that adolescents are part of the total.