Nigel Abraham, MD, lives in Lebanon.
I am a pediatrician working to address the mental health crisis in New Hampshire children, and we need your help. When the COVID-19 pandemic was really ramping up in the United States, I was working in the emergency room as a final year medical student in Texas. As patient after patient rolled into our ER in respiratory distress (primarily adults), it soon became evident that there was another “pandemic” developing in our pediatric population: a mental health crisis. Suddenly our pediatric floor was seeing unprecedented numbers of children, teens, and young adults that had attempted to take their own lives.
When I moved to New Hampshire in 2021 to train as a pediatric resident physician, I realized that this mental health crisis affecting our children was a nationwide problem, and it was worsening. One of my first patients in New Hampshire was a 15-year-old girl who had attempted to take her life five times. Despite this, I was shocked at how difficult it was to obtain resources to help a child with depression even as severe as hers. She was waiting in a general hospital for over 45 days without the necessary psychiatric care until she could finally be transferred to a mental health hospital because of extremely long waitlists. While I wish I could say that this patient was an isolated case, I have since had many more patients, our children, with similar heart-wrenching stories.
Not a week goes by during which I do not see a child, adolescent, or young adult at the clinic, ER, hospital floor or ICU with severe depression/anxiety, suicidal thoughts, or suicidal attempts. The statistics reflect what my colleagues and I have been seeing in our clinics and hospitals. According to the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, suicide is now the second leading cause of death for New Hampshire residents ages 10-34.
For this reason, I, along with the NH American Academy of Family Physicians, support Senate Bill 85 which has passed the NH Senate and NH House but is being heard again by the House Commerce Committee. This bill advocates for:
Creating a clinically staffed 24/7 crisis call center that provides crisis intervention capabilities via telephone, online chat, and text message. Creating mobile crisis response teams available to reach any person in the service area in their home, school, workplace, or any other community-based location of the individual in crisis in a timely manner. Crisis stabilization programs that provide short-term observation and crisis stabilization services to all referrals in a home-like, non-hospital environment. Creating a study commission to identify and recommend means to establish sustainable financing for delivery of behavioral health crisis programs. Limiting insurance pre-authorization requirements for emergency behavioral health care (similar to emergency treatment for a heart attack, which doesn’t need insurance pre-authorization).
Pediatricians across New Hampshire urge the House Commerce Committee and the full NH House to pass SB 85 and send the bill to Governor Sununu’s desk. We cannot afford to wait any longer to get this done.