Children experiencing mental health crises are flooding emergency departments across the country. Because of an extreme shortage of inpatient beds and providers who can treat them, these kids end up staying in an emergency room for days, weeks or sometimes months, awaiting the care they desperately need.
Kids are losing their childhoods, parent-child relationships are straining to breaking points, and hospitals are overwhelmed. Unless the pediatric mental health crisis is addressed with the same urgency at every level of government and across communities, children's hospitals will continue to face challenges from the boarding crisis. Children's hospitals need support now.
In "The Wait to Nowhere: When a Crisis Goes Untreated," a short-form documentary, you'll hear stories from those who are living and have lived this nightmare: the mom whose 9-year-old spent eight days in the emergency department and received no treatment; the young woman who lived in the emergency department for two weeks as a teenager because of untreated grief; the hospital care teams who plead for immediate action; and government leaders, including former Governors John Kasich and Steve Beshear, who reveal what can and must happen now to address this crisis.
"The Wait to Nowhere" reveals the issues that pediatric emergency departments across the country continue to face. There is more that policymakers can do to address the crisis and change the system. The film challenges lawmakers to acknowledge this real and prevalent crisis—and act now before more children are lost.
Watch the trailer
For more information about the documentary, contact Heidi Baskfield, executive director for Speak Our Minds.
A special thank you to:
- Children's Hospital Colorado
- Children's Hospital New Orleans
- Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
- Connecticut Children's Medical Center
- Dell Children's Medical Center
- MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children's Hospital
