A Community Approach to Improving Access to Behavioral Health Services
The South Texas region, with its large rural areas, has meager pediatric behavioral health services. It has traditionally failed to recruit adequate mental health professionals. Children with behavioral health needs often lack insurance, adequate food, housing, and transportation. Many are undocumented or have parents who are undocumented. Driscoll Children’s Hospital has sought to build community solutions available to children outside the walls of the children’s hospital. Staffing schools with mental health personnel offering evidence based interventions has the potential for profound and measurable results. They will explore the outcomes of their Positive Parenting Program, integrated primary care medical home, and deploying mental health professionals in our schools: 1) Can parenting training reduce the prescription of ADHD meds in the young child? and 2) Can co-located mental health professionals in schools decrease the rates of self-harm, emergency department visits, and inpatient hospitalizations?