Health
Communication key to fighting increase in child suicide
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By KAREN HOPPER USHER
Capital News Service
LANSING – Michigan health officials say there isn’t enough help for kids with mental health problems.
Beds are closing, community mental health is underfunded and there’s a shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists, said Dr. Bernard Biermann, medical director of the inpatient child and adolescent psychiatric unit at the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. There’s a major crisis in treatment availability, he said. The number of Michigan kids ages 10-14 who died by suicide doubled between 2011 and 2014, the most recent year for which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has data. That year, 20 kids died by suicide compared to 10 kids in 2011. Michigan’s rate of 3.1 deaths per 100,000 is higher than the national average of 2.1.