New Jersey schools

MACmiracle
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 21:32:14 +0000

In my family, we have always had to wait some time for a mental health appointment, usually several weeks if not longer. I had one kid suffering for years because I could not find one child psychiatrist who was in our network and had an opening. After much time and searching I finally found one out of network. Many people could not have afforded that. I still schedule counseling visits for my kid who still needs it several months in advance.

Once I scheduled an appointment four months out, and the provider canceled at the last minute and we had to start over.

I’ve had friends who had to resort to taking their kids to a hospital mental health crisis center or call the police to be able to get an order for hospitalization when there was a risk of self-harming because they had no other option to get care when they needed it. I know of four families that went through that in the last couple of years.

That is the state of mental health in our area at least. There’s a serious shortage of providers. It’s not just Rowan. It just falls very short of what it should be.

The sad thing about the Rowan situation is that the kid who committed suicide was from an area relatively close by. I think it is tragic that he was unable to get help close to home, because according to reports he had tried to get help at Rowan.