Mental health and stable housing were among doctors’ top concerns for Kansas City children, according to a new report from Children’s Mercy Hospital released every three years.
Children’s Mercy Hospital found that mental health is a growing problem among Kansas City youth and that access to health care is becoming increasingly difficult for local families. Hunger, housing instability and other factors related to poverty are also affecting the health of children throughout the metro area.
Children’s Mercy publishes this community health needs assessment once every three years. The lengthy report listed data collected from 1,250 local families and hundreds of community health care experts.
Increased rates of depression and anxiety in young people
Children’s Mercy researchers found that the percentage of local children experiencing “fair” or “poor” mental health has been steadily increasing over the past 10 years. In 2012, only 6.9% of children ages 5-17 experienced these low mental health ratings. Now, that number has more than doubled to 14.3%.
Depression diagnoses among the same age group increased from 4.1% in 2012 to 14.1% in 2021. Anxiety diagnoses increased even more significantly, from 8.1% to 25.6% during the same period.
Experts say these increases aren’t just the result of heightened awareness of mental health.
“Certainly, the slow decline of [mental health] stigma allows people to feel more comfortable coming forward,” said Dr. Sarah Soden, director of developmental and behavioral health at Children’s Mercy. “But also, the actual anxiety and depression manifesting in children and adolescents is on the rise.”
The hospital study also found that mental health is the top health concern for parents of teens. 36.4% of parents with children between the ages of 12 and 17 ranked it as the number one problem affecting adolescents in the community.
But despite this pressing health issue, many families still find mental health care inaccessible.
“If the pandemic had never happened, we would still be dealing with a crisis of need,” Soden added. “But the pandemic just took it over and exploited it even more.”
Accessing healthcare is getting harder
The hospital study found that families are increasingly struggling to access the health care their children need. Nearly half of those surveyed last year said they had experienced “difficulty or delay of some kind in receiving [their] the medical care the child needs.
In 2015, nearly 98% of people reported having a reliable source of ongoing health care for their children. That number has been falling ever since, and is now hovering around 85%.
“Families were quite clear that the systems for getting care for their children in this community were too complex,” said Margo Quiriconi, the hospital’s director of community health initiatives.
Difficulty getting a doctor’s appointment and inconvenient office hours were the main reasons cited for this pattern. Finding a doctor was also a barrier, while the cost of medical care was not a major factor.
Quiriconi noted that health care providers could play a role in removing some of these barriers by holding clinics and health events at times that parents indicated were most convenient for them.
“What families really want is some of those free hours on weekdays that might better meet their needs,” he said. “We as a provider community need to think about how we offer appointments and how we make them accessible.”
Housing is health care
The hospital found that 14% of children in the Kansas City metropolitan area live in poverty. This percentage is highest in Wyandotte County, where more than one in four children live in poverty: a total of 26.7%. Neighboring Johnson County has the lowest child poverty rate at just 5.4%.
Community leaders surveyed in the report said that the issue that most affects the health of local children is housing. This included the cost, stability and conditions of the housing in which the children live.
“Children who live in poverty or overcrowded conditions are more likely to have respiratory problems, be at risk of infections and [to] they have mental health problems,” the hospital said in its Thursday filing.
The report also noted that homeless children are twice as likely to get ear infections, four times more likely to develop asthma, and have five times more gastrointestinal problems than housed children.
Problems at home also lead to poor health outcomes for children, the study found. The most common Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) reported was parental separation or divorce, affecting 25.8% of children in the hospital’s coverage area. Close behind were financial difficulties, with an impact of 24.7%. Other common ACEs included mental illness and substance abuse in the home.
Hunger also affects local children, although not as much as before. The study found that overall food insecurity in the metro dropped from 35.9% in 2018 to 31% last year. Jackson County had the highest rate in the area, with Wyandotte County in second place.
Have more questions about healthcare in the Kansas City area? Ask the Journalism Service team at [email protected].
.
