Sharing – Number of Americans Headed to ER for Suicidal Thoughts, Self-Harm Keeps Rising
This isn’t new information for regular readers around here, what April says in the article below is a problem that just keeps getting worse.
“April Foreman, an executive committee member of the board of directors at the American Association of Suicidology and a suicide prevention coordinator at the VA Health System in Baton Rouge, La., wasn’t surprised by the news.
“Nobody who’s trying to figure out mental health care is going to tell you that we’re being underutilized,” she said. “There are huge wait times and it’s really hard to get care.
“That means that more people are going to access mental health care in one of the few places that you can get it when you are in crisis, which is your emergency room, or even worse, with local law enforcement,” said Foreman, who was not involved in the report.”
If someone with an issue can’t get help, because of wait times, inaccessibility, cost, or because there just isn’t any, things will continue to get worse. Eventually, the only options left are ER visits or prison.
Those are no place to get mental health treatment, but it really is the only thing we can offer to so many people. That’s not good enough.
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