Project 173159

Eighty percent of psychiatric disorders begin when people are young. The pediatric mental health system, however, has been described as the "orphan's orphan" in Canadian health care, a term meant to highlight the chronic under-funding, limited service options, and lack of specially trained mental health personnel. While 15% (approximately 1.2 million) of Canadian children and youth live with a mental illness, only 1 in 6 receives necessary mental health services, leaving those untreated vulnerable to acute crises and in need of ad hoc support. Demand for mental health services in the emergency department (ED) is increasing. EDs are now a well-documented, key system entry point for families hoping to access mental health care. We will utilize a large, comprehensive, provincial database to investigate the mental health presentations made by Alberta¿s children and youth to EDs. With data spanning six years, we will describe the features of pediatric mental health ED visits and identify geographic areas that have high presentation rates using novel statistical techniques. These analyses will help target geographic areas for more detailed investigations and provide insights for health policy interventions that can improve the mental health care of Canada's children and youth.