Study Offers New Details on Pediatric Mental Health Boarding – ANI

Read article - Quotes Fiona McEnany, MPH '19, Guarini '25, and JoAnna Leyenaar, associate professor of pediatrics and of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, in a feature story about a study they led that examined pediatric mental health “boarding” in the U.S. The study found that the practice of admitting children and adolescents to emergency rooms and inpatient units while they wait for a psychiatric bed to become available has increased in the last decade and has been made worse by a lack of psychiatric resources. "Although mental health boarding is widely recognized as a major health system challenge, its processes, outcomes, and risk factors had not previously been systematically reviewed," said McEnany. "Our goal was to characterize the prevalence of pediatric mental health boarding and to identify factors among patients and hospitals that increase the likelihood of this care process."