Editor: Kids are currently experiencing a mental health crisis.
I’m a pediatrician working in Aurora and over the last several years I’ve had the privilege of working with adolescent patients hospitalized for mental health concerns. What I’ve learned is shocking. Before the pandemic, mental health services had a one year wait list. Now, though, our system is over run. Kids pour into the emergency department every day with serious suicide attempts. Before I mostly saw kids contemplating suicide, now they are coming in after swallowing whole bottles of pills. There are teenagers whose weights have dropped so precipitously that they fill an entire floor of the hospital. Our system isn’t built to handle this. We don’t have enough beds, nor enough therapists. But what’s worse is that many insurance companies won’t cover the life-saving therapies these children need to recover. Most eating disorder programs don’t take Medicaid, a failure that leads to a lifetime of disordered eating and healthcare costs.
If we want to save our kids and grow them into a generation that is productive and happy, the city of Aurora must dedicate significant ARPA funding addressing this mental health crisis. Our children, families, and community depend on it.
— Brenna Cameron, via letters@sentinelcolorado.com