You all know the story. A little girl is found dead on her bathroom floor, “emaciated and emaciated.” The family is charged with death by neglect. The government system continues to block the media from getting answers. The Governor says he’s open to calling a special council to reexamine homeschooling policy and close holes in the safety net to make sure other kids don’t fall behind.
But forget about this for a moment and remember that girl.
Kinnedy Miller was 14 years old. Criminal charges, Her family believed she had suffered from an eating disorder for years, and they detailed “obvious and pronounced physical problems” that left her physically unable to function independently for nearly a week before her death.
Her family said she had only been out twice in four years and had not attended school since 2020.
according to Information provided At the direction of Gov. Jim Justice’s chief of staff, state police went to Kinnedy’s home in 2023 after a distant relative called and expressed concern that she had not been seen in public for a significant amount of time. Kinnedy told one of the officers that she was scared of COVID-19 and did not want to be around other people.
While the past few months have brought ugly revelations about child abuse and the state’s broken child welfare system, there are also quieter stories about damaged girls struggling with mental illness.
And the question remains: even if her mother had sought the medical care she needed, would she have been able to get it?
Nationwide, there is a mental health crisis among adolescent girls. 2023 CDC DataNearly three in five teenage girls felt sad or hopeless at any given time in 2021, twice as many as teenage boys.
Emergency department visits among teenage girls have skyrocketed across the country during the pandemic. 22% increase in pandemic’s second yearMeanwhile, visits by teenage boys have declined.
Researchers say the increase is linked to increases in suicide, self-harm and eating disorders.
In the country, in the second year of the pandemic, Over 3,000 children The number of children who visited West Virginia University School of Medicine’s emergency departments was just over 2,000 in 2019. This represents a 62% increase in the number of children seeking emergency mental health care at West Virginia University School of Medicine hospitals, and the network added eight emergency departments during this period.
As any medical professional will tell you, most emergency rooms are not the place to take a child with a mental illness. No emergency room in West Virginia provides mental health care for adolescents. They leave kids in limbo for hours, days, or even weeks until a mental health facility hours away picks them up, or the parents give up and take them home, often via a call to child protective services.
A lack of community mental health services has plagued our state for the past decade. Nine years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice investigated the system and Reported the findings In a letter to then-Governor Tomlin, he wrote:
“We conclude that West Virginia is not serving children with serious mental illness in the integrated settings that best meet their needs. [Americans with Disabilities Act]”The state has unnecessarily separated thousands of children from their families and important people in their lives. With the right services, the state could successfully treat these children in their homes and communities. The systemic failure to develop critical home- and community-based mental health services has put mentally ill children currently living in the community at risk for unnecessary institutionalization.”
Lack of community-based mental health services leaves hundreds of foster children in West Virginia They will be admitted to out-of-state care facilities or psychiatric hospitals. Because states don’t know where to put them.
I know this issue well. I watched this issue unfold 10 years ago. legislation Develop a state strategic plan to improve mental health care for the state’s youth. The bill has stalled in the Senate Finance Committee because the state Department of Health and Human Services has imposed a $50,000 financial subsidy on the bill to cover personnel costs for an employee who will oversee the work.
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee refused to put the bill on the agenda, citing a fiscal note.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this bill recently, wondering where our state might be today if the Legislature had prioritized children’s health and dedicated $50,000 to making improvements.
“As this case continues to unfold, as reporters search for answers, and as state governments search for some kind of closure, we must remember that at the heart of this monumental case is a young girl who needed mental health care but was denied it. It’s time to make our dysfunctional mental health system and its complicated relationships with the child welfare and foster care systems a legislative priority. It’s time to put in the hard work and resources.”
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