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Despite steeply increased rates of mental and behavioral health distress among children and adolescents—with around 20% of youth reporting clinical depression and suicide being the second leading cause of death—nearly half the US population lacks adequate access to psychiatrists and psychotherapists. In rural areas, such as those in Wisconsin, almost a quarter of all counties have no psychiatrists at all.
The Wisconsin Child Psychiatry Consultation Program (WI CPCP) helps fill this void. The program’s psychiatrists provide more than 1,900 primary care clinicians with phone and email guidance on delivering mental health care to more than 900,000 children and adolescents in underserved rural and urban areas statewide, Matthew D. Jandrisevits, PhD, and his coauthors at the Medical College of Wisconsin wrote in The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research.
Psychiatry Outreach to Primary Care