With this issue of Hopkins Children’s magazine, we’re particularly proud to highlight work that our clinicians and researchers are doing to meet the needs of a very vulnerable group of pediatric patients.
As you’ll learn in our cover story (“Calming the Crisis”), children and teens here and across the country are experiencing an unprecedented level of mental health challenges — problems that began before COVID-19 and have worsened in the intervening months. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association paints an alarming picture: Between 2011 and 2020, the proportion of emergency department visits for mental health reasons nearly doubled among children, adolescents and young adults — to 13.1% of all ED visits for this age group.
The pain for young people and their families is immediate and can be overwhelming, and our clinicians and administrators are showing true leadership in finding solutions to confront this crisis. Actions already underway include increasing inpatient staffing and beds to serve more young patients at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and implementing evidence-based outpatient mental health programs that are easier for families to access. Some of these programs may even be scaled up to help young patients at hospitals throughout the United States.
We are so grateful to members of our team who are serving on the front lines of mental health care — our physicians, nurses, social workers, child life specialists and volunteers who work day in and day out to serve troubled young patients, alleviate backlogs in the ED and pursue research aimed at making a timely (and lasting) difference.
Their great work, and the dedicated efforts of so many others across the Children’s Center — which you’ll read about in these pages — inspires hope and excitement for the future.
Margaret “Maggie” Moon, M.D., M.P.H.
Co-Director and Pediatrician-in-Chief, Johns Hopkins Children’s Center
Co-Director and Surgeon-in-Chief, Johns Hopkins Children’s Center