Nemours Children’s Health to offer mental health help for kids in primary care offices

ORLANDO, Fla. — A second Central Florida health system is expanding its services after a pandemic spike in mental health crises among kids.

Nemours Children’s Health will soon offer mental illness treatment as an integral part of children’s primary care. The new resources aim to remove barriers to lifesaving help.

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The initiative will give kids immediate access to embedded mental health counselors at more than a dozen Nemours primary care locations, allowing treatment on the same day a child is seen.

“Children are facing challenges that we never faced as we were growing up. The world is different now,” said Dr. Tom Lacy, Central Florida division chief of Nemours Children’s primary care.

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Even before the pandemic, pediatricians like Lacy noted a decade of growing mental health issues in young patients.

While in those cases the children were quickly referred to another provider, critical time can be lost in that extra step.

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“And then COVID just made it a lot worse,” Lacy said. “We had a huge increase in anxiety and depression and isolation during that.”

Nemours Children’s Hospital reports that 52 children were admitted for some range of intentional self harm incidents during the pandemic.

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Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital admitted 31.

And at AdventHealth for Children, the number jumped to 300.

Those increases are why Nemours will soon have mental health counselors directly accessible within its children’s primary care offices. The phase-in approach will start with eight locations and eventually include all 16.

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“We can do a direct handoff to the counselor there in the office or through telemedicine, and the kids are getting the care in something they’re familiar with, a place that is normal for them, their pediatric office they come to on a regular basis,” Lacy said.

The Nemours model follows the partnership of AdventHealth and Dr. Phillips Charities, where recruitment is underway for clinicians in a new comprehensive mental health center that will treat patients ages 6 to 24, regardless of their ability to pay.

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“If you don’t manage these issues at the right time, you can cause a lot of suffering and harm to children,” said Dr. Raj Wadhawan, senior executive officer for AdventHealth for Children.

The projects work to address pressing needs for youth mental health resources in Central Florida, where in at least three counties there are only one to three psychiatrists for every 10,000 kids.

Both mental health programs by Nemours and AdventHealth are expected to begin fully operating in early 2022.

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