If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting 鈥988.”
In January, a teenager in suburban St. Louis informed his high school counselor that a classmate said he planned to kill himself later that day.
The 14-year-old classmate denied it, but his mother, Marie, tore through his room and found a suicide note in his nightstand. (She asked 麻豆女优 Health News to publish only her middle name because she does not want people to misjudge or label her son.)
His parents took him to Mercy Hospital St. Louis. According to his mother, providers told them they didn鈥檛 have beds available at their behavioral health center, so the teen spent three days in a room in a secured area of the emergency department and saw a doctor twice, one time virtually.
Joe Poelker, a Mercy hospital spokesperson, declined to answer questions from 麻豆女优 Health News. Leaders of Mercy and other local hospitals have described the shortage of beds for inpatient pediatric psychiatric care in the St. Louis area as for years.
Nationwide, psychiatric 鈥渂oarding鈥 鈥 when a patient waits in the emergency room after providers decide to admit the person 鈥 has increased because of a rise in , among other mental health issues, and a shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds, according to a study of 40 hospitals in the . It found the number of cases in which children spent at least two days in pediatric hospitals before being transferred for psychiatric care also increased 66% from 2017 through 2023 to reach 16,962 instances.
St. Louis Children鈥檚 Hospital leaders aim to address that problem by opening a 77-bed pediatric mental health hospital in the suburb of Webster Groves. But as often happens with such proposals, neighbors objected. They worry it would worsen safety and lower .
Over the past decade, proposed psychiatric facilities for minors in , , , , and have also faced local resistance.
Behavioral health care advocates counter that such concerns are largely unfounded and rooted in stigma. Locating such facilities in remote areas 鈥 as neighbors sometimes suggest 鈥 reinforces the misconception that people with mental illness are dangerous and makes it harder to help them without their support system nearby, doctors say.
鈥淲e wouldn’t take children with cancer and say they need to be two hours away, where there is no one around them,鈥 said Cynthia Rogers, a pediatric psychiatrist at St. Louis Children鈥檚. 鈥淭hese are still children with illnesses, and they want to be in their home city, where their family can visit them.鈥
In the United States, the number of suicides among minors increased 62% from 2002 to 2022, according to a from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At St. Louis Children鈥檚, the crisis has fueled more emergency room visits, Rogers said, with behavioral health visits nearly quadrupling from 2019 to 2023, jumping from 565 to 2,176. She attributes the increase to factors such as social media engagement, isolation caused by shutdowns during the covid-19 pandemic, and the political climate, which she said has been particularly hard on LGBTQ+ children.
鈥淭he pandemic seemed to throw gasoline on the fire,鈥 Rogers said.
In the middle- and upper-class suburb of Webster Groves, St. Louis Children鈥檚 and KVC, a behavioral health provider, want to use a site that served as in the 19th century to create 65 inpatient beds for children needing care for about a week and 12 residential beds for people requiring longer stays. KVC now runs a who struggle in traditional classrooms and offers services to help children in foster care.
鈥淚ntroducing a hospital into this historically significant residential area disrupts its stability by undermining鈥 its character, one resident testified at a meeting.
Tim Conway, who has lived across from the site for three decades, told 麻豆女优 Health News that his opposition is primarily because the facility and its parking would take up more space than the existing structures.
The detailed security plans have not eased his concerns. 鈥淚t makes me wonder why it needs to be that robust,鈥 Conway said.
, a psychiatrist at the American Center for Psychiatry and Neurology in the United Arab Emirates, has impacts the locations of psychiatric facilities around the world and said people often don鈥檛 want the hospitals nearby because they associate them with violence or unpredictable behavior.
鈥淭he misconception of increased danger often stems from outdated stereotypes rather than factual evidence,鈥 El Hayek said.
Little evidence suggests that people with mental illness are more likely to commit a crime or be violent than the general population, with the exception of people with a severe illness such as schizophrenia, who, while it鈥檚 still rare, to commit a violent act.
But residents near mental health hospitals have been rattled by encounters with patients who escaped or and about missing patients.
In Oklahoma City, Richard Scroggins in 2014 opposed the expansion of Cedar Ridge Behavioral Hospital, which then treated youths and adults, because of its security issues.
Scroggins, who raises horses and cattle on his property, at the time that he once found a stranger raking leaves in his yard. After determining the person was suffering from mental illness and harmless, Scroggins said, he called the police, who retrieved the person.
The Cedar Ridge provider ultimately dropped plans to expand the facility after community opposition.
Scroggins has since encountered other patients from the facility on his property but none in recent years, he told 麻豆女优 Health News in February. His perspective on the hospital has changed because its staff addressed his security concerns.
鈥淣obody wants it in their neighborhood, but it鈥檚 a necessity,鈥 Scroggins said. 鈥淚’m a Christian, so we are supposed to reach out and help.鈥
Carrie Blumert, CEO of the , said psychiatric facilities make surrounding areas safer by providing medical care and 鈥渢reating the root of people’s issues rather than just throwing them in a jail cell.鈥
In Marie鈥檚 case, her son was ultimately admitted to Mercy-affiliate Hyland Behavioral Health Center and spent a few days there until a physician told the family he probably just needed to speak with a counselor, she said. He was discharged.
A day later, she said, the teen said he still wanted to kill himself, so his parents took him to St. Louis Children鈥檚, where he was admitted the same day. After a 15-minute visit, Marie said, a doctor pulled her aside and asked, 鈥淗ave you ever thought that he might be on the autism spectrum?鈥
鈥溾極h my gosh, you’re the first person to validate my feeling,鈥欌 Marie told the doctor.
Her son stayed two weeks at the hospital, during which providers diagnosed him with autism and prescribed antidepressants. He returned to the classroom and baseball field, Marie said, but learning he has autism upset him.
鈥淗e’s still trying to process that, and he’s very sensitive. And they are teenagers, so when kids are mean to him at school or make fun of him, he takes that to heart way more than a typical teenager would,鈥 Marie said. 鈥淚 have hope for him that he will be OK.鈥
And soon, she knows, kids like her son could have another option in St. Louis if they need acute psychiatric help.
Despite community pushback, the Webster Groves City Council the rezoning needed for the hospital in January. The officials described opponents鈥 concerns as legitimate but said the hospital would benefit children鈥檚 mental health and the surrounding community.
鈥淭his is by far and away one of the easiest votes I鈥檝e ever had to take,鈥 said Councilmember David Franklin, adding that the approval demonstrates that 鈥淲ebster Groves cares not only about its own citizens but the citizens of this region.鈥
