Standing up for children’s mental and behavioral health
Hi everyone. Thanks so much for joining us for this latest episode of Medically Speaking. I am your host Heather Lee and I’m here today with Dr. Chelsea McCabe who is the director of behavioral health and also a psychologist at Oshai Children’s Hospital. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I’m excited. Yeah, we’re excited to have you. And when we talk about mental and behavioral health, I feel like there’s been a lot of conversation about it. Um, as there should be. Um, first let’s talk about what falls under the umbrella because I feel like we hear those terms a lot, but people don’t really understand what mental and behavioral health actually is. Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think too the field has also expanded to have it be more behavioral health than just mental health in the sense of it is a whole spectrum of you can have you know a specific disorder as far as anxiety, depression, um attention deficits, um bipolar, schizophrenia versus also your behavioral what you’re doing in your day-to-day life. Maybe you don’t meet diagnostic criteria for a specific disorder but you are struggling and it’s good to get help. And again, those can be adjustment disorders or a stress related disorder. One of the things that I had learned about is somebody had mentioned autism and I never really thought of it under that umbrella, but when you really think about all of the moving parts and the treatment and the specialists, it makes sense. Yes. And again, with the different developmental disorders, again, technically ADHD, it falls under that the same umbrella as the autism. So, it’s really coming together. And thankfully at Kida we have you know specific the children’s psychiatry clinic but we also have Robert Warernner center and the staff go between I actually have a meeting later today with Dr. Michelle Hartley McAndrews who’s the medical director of that clinic. So, we really do try and collaborate and make sure we’re giving care across the the system. And I think that’s what’s so special about having, you know, the intensive outpatient program, the children’s psychiatry clinic in OSHAI, everybody working together because you can really have that continuum of care from inpatient to outpatient, making sure that you cover all of your bases. Exactly. So, we’re we’re not only again at the outpatient center and collaborating with some of the other centers, but we are inpatient as well. So a lot of times too when someone’s inpatient if they need follow-up care the team that is in the hospital then can coordinate with our team that’s outpatient and then we are also in some of the other colida clinics like Niagara pediatrics and Broadway pediatrics and healthy way. So we also have you know some presence in those clinics which makes it helpful to be able to just coordinate care. How does it make it better for patients when you have that continuum? Yeah, I think the best part is honestly the warm handoff in the sense of you know when you are at one of your appointments that you can then have the information. We actually do too try to partner with the community too so that if I have to you know make a referral to somewhere else that I know those things because when you can say hey this is where you’re going to park or this is what the hours that they’re open and you know that information people are again whether it’s mental health or even other types of appointments you then feel more support. You’re not just going in being like what am I looking for? And so being able to just have more information and know the different systems helps then get the care you need. I feel like it also helps to remove some of those barriers to care, right? The easier we make it for people to get the care they need. It could be as something as simple as transportation or parking. Um, you remove those layers, get them to where they need to be, they get the care that they need a lot quicker and they feel more comfortable, right? Um, what about who utilizes the services? Um I think about the 12th floor at OSHAI for example, our hematology oncology patients. How might the patients and their families connect with your team and and how do they help? Yeah. So again, there’s a wide spectrum of services that are available. So there is actually a psychologist on the 12th floor who’s full-time who works there and the team member or a family member may meet with that team and have support while they’re actually on the floor. And then again there is Roswell does have an outpatient psychology center too and an outpatient psychologist so they may meet with that psychologist or two sometimes they connected with someone that was from specifically OSHAI or they can come to us. We do a really nice job of when we get a referral for a patient that’s seen at Roswell, connecting with our partners at Roswell to make sure, hey, what are the services that they’re already getting? Just so that we don’t overstep and we make sure that we’re we’re providing again the the care without the patient having to do that extra work because there’s a lot that goes with the physical diagnosis, you know, how do you cope with that? How does the family cope with that? Um that people don’t always think about. you know, they think that you get a cancer diagnosis and it’s strictly the medicine, but there’s the the other part of the treatment, right, as well. Um, and how important is it for family members to identify that a child needs some intervention and how the quicker the intervention, how that can make a bigger difference in in their care and their outcome. Yeah. So again, kind of one of the reasons why I went into child psychology because you can kind of specialize with, you know, geriatric or adult or, you know, even different populations. And I think one of the most amazing parts of being able to help kids when they’re younger, they really can change these trajectories. Um, you can change um, you know, the physiological responses that you have to stress, things like that. And so being able to, you know, intervene even even when the ba there is a baby or um we have some like nurture and play groups which are for moms with infants just to be able to support moms in their role of supporting their child’s development. And so the earlier you can intervene with that, the better as far as then those are the neuropathways that get developed and being able to help, you know, prevent long-term mental illness. And it’s that positive domino effect, right? And starting earlier. I’ve heard some people say mental behavioral health in kids, kids can’t possibly be dealing with, you know, some sort of mental illness. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. Especially when you look at some of the the surveys, you know, a recent survey of high school students, it was nearly half of all high school students surveyed said that they struggled in some capacity at some level with with mental um mental and behavioral health issues. That’s astounding. Yeah. And again, I think that this is the hard part too because we don’t want to pathize or say every single thing is, you know, negative or that if people are saying that they are struggling that that then means, you know, you have again you meet that diagnosis or you have depression or you have anxiety. But again, that’s why there is still help though when you’re struggling and how you respond to that. And I actually think this is like a a unique part of the mental and behavioral health field that one, it’s being talked about more, so people have opportunities to be able to share their experience or what works or what might not work. So that’s a good thing. But then two, again, this being able to intervene younger in a sense of just being able to, you know, for a long time the parenting approaches that were taught were very behavioral, right? Your child has this happen and then you have a consequence. And that was kind of where you know a lot of the work was being done and that work is still important at times but also there’s a lot more work now about attachment and nurture and how we can um you know provide validation and you know shift those consequences and also just think about like hey what was going on before which was what we call antecedent control to be able to look at the environment and say hey maybe my kid’s acting this way because of this not because of what my response is and so preemptively support. So that helps again versus in the actual like parenting world of it, but then also intervening and and how does the community and the schools and all the people actually come together to support this child? On that note, what should parents look out for and how do they know what they can tackle at home and when it’s time to seek professional help and when they should call your team? Right. That that’s a great question and I think again you know one the pediatricians are great resources in the sense of you’re seeing them you know regularly and more often and so sometimes the pediatrician can be just a good person to talk to and a lot of the pediatricians also have some um mental and behavioral health support in the offices now. So that’s just like a nice person to check in with and we have really good relationships and so do other agencies in the community to be your referral source for that. But also being able to just kind of know your kid’s baseline. So, if your kid was always a kid that was very social and wanted to do lots of things and that changes, that’s a really good indicator that like something’s different here, right? or they were a really social or talkative kid to you and they would be out of their room and be willing to kind of engage with you and that shifts versus like if you did have a kid that really did prefer more alone time and they always have had only maybe one or two friends that they like to connect to and they’re not as that then that behavior wouldn’t be something that would be atypical for their kid but maybe for another kid would and then there are just like developmental differences right so we know that like parents are actually really important and really really you know liked by kids when they are in elementary school that starts to shift a little bit in middle school and by the end of middle school you really do see the shift of like some attitude changes you have hormones and so also knowing there too like you don’t want to come down too hard and be like you need therapy now right but you want to be able to get a sense are they still engaging in their hobbies when they’re around their friends do you still see that irritability or is that gone right and being able to um really just be mindful of the whole picture and not just okay they’re angry at me only. I think about my mom, you know, you’re just being a a bratty teenager, you know. So, but I think the baseline and knowing what that baseline is can really help you sort of navigate um mental health needs have increased obviously especially over the past two decades. We’ve seen a huge increase in the patients we serve, the people who are calling. um how has OSHAI changed its approach? What are we doing to better serve the needs of the community? Yeah, I think that’s the most exciting part about my job is um OSHAI and Kida is very dedicated to mental and behavioral health. We had the festival of trees um in honor of the behavioral health at Oshai this past um December which was a beautiful event um and just being able to grow the services because of the fact that the need is there. Um one our our clinic has grown tremendously. We went from 8 to 9,000 visits in a year to about 13,000 visits in a year. We’ve hired more teams. We’ve also grown. We now have an eating disorder intensive outpatient program um which is 3 days a week, 3 hours a day. Uh and being able to get intensive services for eating disorder right locally um for you know age 8 up until 18 whereas before there was some older adolescent services but nothing younger. um so that before you had to go to Rochester or even sometimes out of state and things like that for services. So to be able to keep it here in the community and grow these different programs has been and I’ve spoken with families um who previously had to travel out of the area and luckily you know were able to come back at the very start of that program. What difference does that make for these patients and really for the families? Logistically, being closer to home is easier, being able to go for a couple of hours versus taking a ton of time off of work, but in their recovery, how does that help being closer to home? Yeah. So if you think about too, so eating disorders unfortunately is one of the harder disorders to treat in the sense of um you know when I when someone’s struggling with depression and say we make some recommendations and you go and try these things, you actually feel better pretty quickly. And so then you’re like, I like my therapist. I want to do this work and you get some relief and it’s rewarding. Whereas an eating disorder, unfortunately, some of the times when I say, “Hey, I need you to eat all of these things that maybe you weren’t eating before or you had stopped eating,” you can actually get pretty mad at your therapist because it doesn’t feel better. You actually feel worse maybe in the moment of that first initial weeks of recovery. And so what can happen if you go away for the treatment and you know the family can’t go and it’s a residential you come home and what happens is is that then sometimes those symptoms can start again because again what you’re then kind of in when you’re at the residential it was protected and you were able to kind of do some of this work but then once you’re in your home environment it’s harder. It’s getting back to the real world the stress is there again. So the nice part is one we do it from 3 to 6 p.m. So it’s after school so you don’t have to get pulled from your school day. There’s parent components. there’s a meal that we do um every day. So all of that stuff you were kind of putting those skills into place and and we’re checking in. Hey, this is what we were doing on you know because it runs Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. How did Friday to Monday go? And really can have an open conversation and provide that like in in vitro support of you know this is we’re we’re going to make this happen. I think one of the interesting things in talking with some patients who have seen you and your team for various diagnosis, the overarching theme was there is no quick fix. There is no, you know, definitive finish line, so to speak. One patient described it to me as a roller coaster and you’re kind of always on this roller coaster. You’re going to have highs and you’re going to have lows. Um, but this particular patient described it as having tools in their tool box. It’s not always a prescription. It’s sometimes giving them the tools they need when these tough situations arise or these difficult moments arise that they know they can tap into that toolbox and they know how to tackle it better than they ever did before. Yes. Exactly. And again, there isn’t like a one-sizefits-all. I even tell patients right when they come in. I try and do this on the assessment appointment because again, you’re coming in, you’re meeting with the stranger, you’re giving all of this information. And so I try in in our team really does a really nice job of even just in that first initial appointment that we give you that we give you some tools already and some psychoed just to walk away from that first appointment that I want to come back. But I say it’s not like a headache where I can say here take this and your headache is going to go away. Um and then you know you’re going to feel better tomorrow. This is a lot of work. Again some things I suggest might not work and I want you to be as honest with me like hey that didn’t go well. please, you know, let’s try something else and something might fit really well. And so trying to also establish that relationship with your therapist or you know the um if you’re seeing a psychiatrist to just be one really open and honest and then two knowing that like when something doesn’t work trying to not become too discouraged that there’s other methods and there’s other things available. There’s that level of trust that they’re building and that doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes that takes some time as well. Uh what about the other teams you had talked about, you know, working with schools and other organizations to make sure that patients get the care they need when they need it, where they need it. Talk about the collaborations that we have in place as well. Yeah. So Buffalo has, you know, a a good community of mental health agencies and providers and being able to collaborate. We actually we were are fortunate enough to even have um a grant um funded collaboration with the mental health advocates of Western New York who have been a great partner in being able to you know offer peer advocates which are people or family um advocates that are people that have had personal experiences with these diagnosis in these systems to get support as well as then being able to offer respit to families that need it. Um they have the teen chat line, the suicide teen chat line that they run. So within that we we pro part partner with them all the time but also we you know have lots of partnerships with the different agencies. Horizon has a full package DBT program and they also have a lot of maternity um services so we make referrals to them and they make referrals back to us to our eating disorder. Same with Bestel Child and Family Endeavor. There’s a lot of us and Spectrum Cares are where we really are in communication. Um there’s an Erie County suicide um coalition that OSHAI is a part of that we are on that um monthly meeting and kind of get updates. Uh Erie County, you know, is similarly like OSHAI really trying to meet the needs of mental and behavioral health and they even have a monthly meeting that leaders attend that I attend that again is kind of checking in with these different um areas of need. It takes a village. We mentioned the IOP, the intensive outpatient program. What inpatient services are there at OSHAI? Who might go to OSHAI for you know a a stay of a a varied length for for what diagnosis? Yeah. So again kind of this is where OSHI I feel like has grown significantly and even in the last two years for mental and behavioral health at OSHAI and that now there are two full-time psychologists that are impatient that are there to support in addition to the psychologist that is on the um 12th floor which is the hemach floor. Um, but now there is a psychologist for the other floors. So again, you you might be at OSHAI for a trauma and you’re really struggling with kind of thoughts that have happened over the past few days or if there was grief related to that. So our team would check in for that. um you might be struggling with diabetes and you know a lot of times you think okay that’s a medical disorder that is you know not kind of covered by mental and behavioral health but the feelings that go along with that diagnosis and even too just the the care that it takes to be able to check your blood sugars to make sure that you are if you’re on a insulin pump that it your pump is ready to go and working and the like behavioral strategies that actually support hey maybe it even is just you know you’re taking a pill having a pill box for reminders. So, a lot of these different um components of the medical disorders we can support by being able to just help with one being a child managing this and how does the parent manage that conflict when the child doesn’t want to, but also just being able to support the actual like stress of the illness. So that happens and then you know unfortunately too at OSHAI we are see we see people who have had um suicide attempts and someone um who’s really struggling and in the midst of a crisis and then our team will evaluate and kind of come in and be able to offer support and kind of link to what you you need. So So that might be an inpatient stay. Yes, that might be an impatient stay. I think about something um that I know a lot of people that have had you know a baby in the NICU. Some are for a couple of days, some are for a couple of months. That is a challenge that a a new mom or a new parent where a psychologist would come in and work. And that’s something that’s relatively new to OSHAI where you saw a need and and decided to expand on that program. Yes, we’re very fortunate. Um the Sense Lake family made a donation to be able to support the role of a psychologist in the NICU and that was very recent within the last six months. And again, this is where too I think our team is is very talented and we’ve been really fortunate in the sense that we then reached out to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and um Milwaukee Children’s Hospital uh to be able to have actually the one of the NICU psychologists came from CHOP to do an intensive training with us to say hey this is how things work in our NICU. this is how you can have a psychologist in this role to make sure that we, you know, were following the standard of care and being able to support the moms the best that we can. And so, you know, that program initially got started at the beginning of the year and and you know, the psychologist that’s in there is seeing many moms a day and it’s making a big difference. And one of the moms even recently said to her, she got it was right when she had started and it was at the end of her stay of the NICU. She was like, “Oh my gosh, like this was just like the support that I needed that I didn’t know was missing.” And so to be able to have that now and offer that I think is a really important thing. And you mentioned a grant. We talked about Festival of Trees. the importance of philanthropy when it comes to a lot of the mental and behavioral health programs because I think there there’s the misconception that a lot of these services are covered by insurance which in many cases couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes. So unfortunately right now the way that the inpatient services at OSHI work because we are a medical hospital are the psychologist times is not reimburseable. So that’s when they’re in the NICU, when you see the psychologist in the ED or any of the floors or even the psychologist that’s on the 12th floor um for the cancer and blood disorders that th that time is not covered as all philanthropy. So we are very fortunate that people in the community have stepped up and are willing to support these because there is a need and then even on the outpatient level. So our intensive outpatient programs um some of the insuranceances cover them and some of them don’t. Um or that they will cover at a very very small rate for you know if you think about an intensive outpatient program we have a dietitian in that program. We have a psychiatrist. We have a psychologist. We have social workers. We have a massive team that’s kind of supporting these families and being able to and the reimbursement rates unfortunately don’t always match the amount of team members that are needed. And we’re really, you know, intentional about making sure people get the care they need. Yeah. We don’t want to do less. We don’t want to have fewer people and we certainly don’t want to turn anybody away. Um, let’s talk stigma. Um, I love that we’re having this conversation. I love that people are going to be listening to this and maybe hopefully learn something that you didn’t know before. There are still both the internal and external stigmas when it when it comes to mental and behavioral health. Uh let’s talk internal first. People don’t always want to admit that they’re struggling. How do you tackle that? How do you make people feel that it is okay? It’s okay to not be okay and it’s okay to ask for help and to need help and to want help. Yeah, I think that’s one probably one of the more important messages that we can talk about and be able to one that like just the same way if you got diagnosed with you know cancer that you’re not saying like what did I do wrong or how come this is happening to me to do the same with our mental and behavioral health. Um similarly with someone who is struggling with suicide that this is not you know their fault quote unquote or that they you know did something that led them to this and trying to take away that internal blame. Um you know there’s a study that I always uh reference when a patient study uh struggling in therapy that um was done among college students of a professor that came into class and gave a pop exam and they surveyed people’s anxiety and they surveyed like people’s reasons for you know failing this pop exam this like uh popup sorry or whatever you would call a you know surprise exam. So what this results showed of this study that people that scored higher with anxiety, the reasons why they said they failed that exam was that they didn’t study enough that they were, you know, their own personal struggles, they blamed it all mostly on themselves versus people that had lower scores of anxiety wrote stuff about the professor, about the class, about it being unfair, no notice that these were even going to happen. And so I try and use that study as a good reference of even just thinking about that for your own disorder, right? That unfortunately the disorder sometimes can inherently make us feel like what did I do wrong? So then you don’t get help or maybe you’re not motivated in treatment because of the fact that you have all of the shame around it versus if we can externalize hey this is just the same as if your body right had high blood pressure and you you know have that genetic history of that you treat it so let’s treat it the same way the external stigmas and how other people view mental illness or mental and behavioral health issues sometimes that’s a little bit because I can’t control how you feel about me and vice versa. Again, conversations I think are the start of it, right? Getting people talking about it and hopefully helping to make people so they don’t feel embarrassed or they don’t feel shame. Um, but how do we tackle some of that because we’re not we’re talking about it, but I feel like we’re not talking about it enough. Yeah. And I think again this is where there’s probably more growth to be done. You know, I I know Dr. Turkovich when he speaks about this he has shared how he’s not had he’s had you know second grade teachers that he had reach out to him on Facebook to say I have so and so can you help connect me or you know being able to just if you yourself struggle or if you have a child who struggles being able to share the help that you get and and how to normalize that most people are impacted by mental and behavioral health in some point in their life that that is a good thing to talk about and share and just how we use that language and express it. Um, even the media, the media has done a really nice job of no longer saying committed suicide. People say die by suicide now. And again, that’s a really important difference and something that like we talked about in our clinic of even just like also how asking people how they want to say, you know, what they’re what they’re struggling with like you have you are a person with anxiety versus like the anxious kid. And some people are okay with different terminology, but opening those conversations up to the words that we’re using and being really mindful of how do we share these experiences so that people feel okay talking about it? What about the people that see coming forward or seeking help as a sign of weakness? How do we tackle that? Yeah, I think again one of the most ways is showing the strength like right even the festival of trees. It’s interesting. I don’t think and you know I I don’t want to ever speak negatively of something but I don’t think a few years ago we were in a place to show those stories of those patients like it was really hard for one even on our team to find patients that wanted to talk about it but it’s very personal it’s very private and and I know too you know there was discussions about not making it so that someone then shames that person’s week but I think the stories speak for themselves and when we’re able to share kind of this was my experience and this is you know how I improved and these are the things that I still need to do. I think it it really does break that like you wouldn’t watch any of those stories and say that person is weak. No, but not by any means. Um when they pick up the phone, the help is needed now. We are making strides to expand our program to expand the spaces. Um, but I think that’s a powerful statement right there because a parent is not calling right now for something that might happen six months down the line. They’re in many times desperate to get their child help right now. How can we better help them? And what are we doing to make sure that maybe the wait times are are that much shorter and we can hire that many more people and therefore help that many more patients? Yeah, I think Dr. Marshall speaks of this a lot too of this being able to our goal is that if someone calls us and says I want help right now that we can help them right now. Um that is a very big goal and something that you know a few years ago our wait list really was 6 months to a year and we’ve brought that down. Sometimes we can get someone in as soon as you know a few weeks and sometimes it does still hit that 3 months. We we never now we’re able to never have anyone wait more than 3 months. But even still when you are struggling you still don’t even want to wait 3 months. So we thankfully again with philanthropy and with other initiatives that kida has we are going to grow um into a bigger space um uh in the new year in in in 2026. And so being able to grow um physically to hire more people. Uh also there’s something called the partial hospitalization program. So I’ve talked about these IOPS which are three days a week, three hours a day. The partial hospitalization programs are 5 days a week. Um and they can be anywhere from 5 to seven hours a day. So being able to open one of those that’s our goal too. So that who would utilize that? So that would be so a lot of times it’s either pro like if you’re really struggling and again maybe you you’re having suicidal ideation or you haven’t been to school or you’re not um you know functioning in the way that you used to be. It could be that before you go to an inpatient hospitalization. So right now we have Bryland and ECMC where someone would be hospitalized inpatient if they were you know at the point of crisis and those you know can be one to two week to 3 week stays depending on the need. um you know and so we the goal is for the partial one to maybe even prevent some of that but also it can be for someone who’s inpatient and maybe not ready to just go back to you know once a week outpatient counseling or you know the getting back into school is going to be a challenge the bridge between an inpatient. So we can we use the word step down from the higher level of care or sometimes if you’re just weekly outpatient we call it a step up into this higher level before you need to actually get to the hospitalization. One of the numbers that was is pretty staggering the surgeon general talked about the number 11. That is the number of years from the first mental health symptoms that a child experiences to the first time they get treatment. 11 years, I think. I mean, we talked about 3 months being a long wait, but 11 years, what takes so long? Is it because parents maybe don’t realize that something is actually an issue? Are kids really good at hiding the things that are bothering them? Um 11 just seems quite frankly unacceptable, right? Yeah. I think again both the reason that you just mentioned and two sometimes it’s just the ability to be able to find the resources get the you know again sometimes too we do have an intensive um outpatient program for um obsessivempulsive disorder too and that treatment for that disorder you need to be highly trained in a specific treatment modality to be able to so sometimes too maybe even someone was receiving treatment but they weren’t getting that specific treatment that they needed for that disorder and so you know that that sometimes happens where someone came to us and they have had three different therapists before and it didn’t get better and you know th those are the really heartbreaking. Um we had a family call recently that they actually got referred to treatment out of state because they didn’t know that the our eating disorder program was in Buffalo and happening and the mom said once she found us but it had been months and again we’re doing a lot of things like this podcast. We’re trying to talk with pediatricians but there’s still people that don’t know. Yeah. And then even too, so we also now have uh this is funded by the office of mental health, a suicide prevention grant where we have um a psychologist or a clinical social worker in our emergency department that all the patients who come into the ED at OSHAI and actually in the the other facilities in Kida system, if they’re 11 or older, they get screened for suicide. And so um now which is a very real thing. People hear 11 years old and you’re still young. You can’t possibly It is It is very real. It is happening in our community. Yeah. And we’ve actually we’ve partnered really with the triage nurses. They give this measure and they are, you know, supporting and then again it can be a warm handoff to one of our team members in the emergency room. And we’ve gotten so many um feedback from the nurses registration actually and then the parents too to be like you know we were coming here because of you know they needed stitches or something but they asked that question and then getting to talk. I had no idea that my child you know was having that. And I do think the community too. I know even at my own primary care I get asked some um questions about anxiety but again I think some of the hard part about that is too is then making sure the right followup is in place. So when you have a team member there that can then give that feedback and hey this is what you do that then helps and hopefully will help catch some of those people that were previously waiting 11 years. Social media it it it’s good it’s bad. I love it. I hate it. You know, I’ll admit there are certain things that I will see on social media that make you feel great about yourselves. There are other things that you see and it just it makes you feel terribly whether it’s the the way you look or maybe you’re not quite as successful as somebody. We compare ourselves a lot and I think you know Instagram and Facebook and all of the things they make it easier um to compare. How does that play into sometimes the struggles that maybe young people are facing these days? because when we were younger, we didn’t have, you know, your life wasn’t on display. It wasn’t this picture perfect thing for everybody to see. Um, does that play into some of the the struggles? Definitely. And I think this is actually a hard one too for parents because right sometimes we just want to say no social media then or no Snapchat or kind of just not give that to their child, which I respect that’s we we talk with parents all the time about this. But the hard part about that is is that then if that’s the way other kids are connecting and you don’t have access to that can of worms, then your child kind of gets held back from that, right? And so there actually again has been a ton of research on this and it’s kind of like a bell curve in the sense of like how much you should have. So if you have too little, if this is on on, you know, you’re thinking of like how people are doing um mentally with it. If you have too little, you actually can be struggling. you can be on the lower side because you don’t have that connection, right? And then you go up and you have a certain amount that’s good. It helps with social connection. It helps with making plans. It helps with being staying connected. But then if on that other end you have too much of it, you really then are going back to where this is really hurting your mental and behavioral health. So being able to one like just as if we were riding a bike and you’re going to say here’s your helmet, here’s your knee pads, here’s your training wheels, and we’re going to help you through it. That’s what we want to do with social media of really supervising and when we introduce these things showing the ways to use it rather than just be like don’t use it right and then also being able to just support like just if you fell down right and you scraped your thing you’re not going to say never use this again right so if a parent has their child has an incident where they maybe did something on social media or shared something or saw something then again sometimes the reaction is be like take it away right and so we have to be really mindful that this is the culture this is a part of it now and how do we you know again have a reaction to something that happened on social media and use it as an opportunity to learn grow and again sometimes it is good to take breaks from it um and being have those phone free times and modeling that for you as the parent right um to say all right I when we are at dinner I’m not pulling my phone out then either and it it is it’s a really different time again back to like parenting being very different from behavior consequence this is also a really different time to be a parent and how do you support using these different devices without again shaming or creating more conflict around them? When it comes to parents who might be listening and they’re wondering, okay, I think my child might need some intervention, might need some help, what are the steps that they should take to get the ball rolling to get their kids the help that they need? Yeah. So, Erie County has um the Erie County path website that shows all of the different like mental and behavioral resources that are in the community. So, that’s like if you just want to Google, you can then see all of that. Um again, the pediatrician, the school counselors, talking to someone like in your immediate can be good. And then again other parents are it’s easier and more savvy techsavvy and can find you know the direct clinics that they need or you know again when even if we have a parent call our intake so we will support even if it’s like hey you maybe you’re not the best fit for us right now or we do have a wait but we we know this program we keep in touch like they can get someone within within 5 days. So even just picking up the phone and calling one of these clinics in the area. Um, you know, I know that I I trust the the community partners, but ourselves, too, just to be a resource for these different um avenues that are needed for, you know, being able to navigate what do I do? Yeah, absolutely. And again, before we wrap up here, a lot of exciting things on the horizon. Again, a new space to help more patients. It’s it’s not just a shiny new space. there really is meaning behind it and it’s helping more people, getting more providers and and cutting down that wait time. So when again should we start to look Yeah, so that should be hopefully in the new year um around you know January, February um of 2026 we hope to be in our new space and and growing and hiring and then again shortly after that hopefully having a partial hospitalization program as well. Yeah, that’s our our big goal is to have so much more uh capacity for care. Any uh final parting thoughts? I just I think you know you and the the Kida team and OSHAI I think there’s just a lot of support for mental and behavioral health and I think that that’s already breaking the stigma and talking about all the things that we talked about today to make this mission to be, you know, a better Western New York. Yeah, it is okay to talk about it. We want you to talk about it and we appreciate you so much Dr. McCabe for being here today and I can’t wait to have you on again when we talk about all of the the expansions and all of the new cool things that we’re going to be doing in the future cuz we will be doing them putting that out into the atmosphere. I love it. Thank you. Thanks for listening.
In this episode, Dr. Chelsey McCabe discusses the importance of children’s mental and behavioral health — a conversation that’s a crucial step toward understanding and advocating for mental health in our youngest generation.
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