Southern Nevada often struggles to care for children with mental health challenges. A common complaint is that Las Vegas’ mental health care system is too fragmented to care for its children successfully. “As parents, we are often faced with unfriendly systems,” one parent said at a recent forum.
Staff at University Medical Center's pediatric emergency department in Las Vegas have a nickname for Southern Nevada: the pediatric mental health vortex. “We call it the polio of our generation,” Dr. Jay Fisher said. “This is a health crisis of unbelievable proportions.”
My story for the 2015 California Data Fellowship will look at mental health encounters involving police and deputies, hospitals and emergency rooms, jails and courts. The goal is to quantify different type of mental health encounters using available data, and lay out the policy implications.
In 2010, a nurse at Napa State Hospital walked back to her ward after dinner, following the same path she’d taken hundreds of times before. But this time, she ran into a patient who should never have been allowed to roam the hospital grounds unsupervised.
On August 27, 2015, sheriffs at the Santa Clara County Main Jail found a 31-year-old inmate with a history of mental illness dead in his cell. His body was covered in feces and vomit. The medical examiner concluded that the man, Michael Tyree, died of internal bleeding from blunt force trauma.
The neglect in their home countries, the journey and the adjustment have caused deep scars in unaccompanied minors from Central America that fled to the United States. The goal for these kids now is to overcome their emotional issues so they can lead healthy and productive adult lives.
Unaccompanied minors from Central America made headlines in 2014 after crossing the USA-Mexico border in unprecedented numbers. Presently, many live in North Texas with parents or guardians. Samuel, a young man age 16, arrived alone trying to avoid the gangs or "maras" in Honduras.
For years, it hasn't been a mystery that unaccompanied children or the so called "children of the border" have crossed the limits of their own countries, gone through Mexico and stepped in the country that represents an escape from their reality and problems: The United States of America.
Proponents of baby courts argue that the traditional system is in crisis. They say the law is in some ways too quick to intervene with parents accused of neglect and abuse. Yet at the same time, they say, the legal system gives families too little attention when it comes to needed services.
Nevada is serving a greater number of mentally ill children in recent years. “This is an epidemic,” said Dr. Jay Fisher. Decades ago, he said, physicians looked to vaccines to preventing epidemics. “This is going to be much more difficult to solve. It’s a 12-headed beast.”
