Mental Health Care For Our Children

Recently my 10 year old grandson who is on the autustic spectrum had all he could take from being bullied, picked on and made fun of for being different. He lashed out by throwing chairs, books etc. The school being a main stream school didn't know how to handle it so they called the police and another organization that insisted he be taken to Shepard Pratt. After a 10 minute interview with my Grandson by a Shepard Pratt Intake Coordinator it was deemed he needed a neuro psyche bed but they didn't have any open beds so he would need to go to GBMC enmergency. Long story short my Grandson sat in the adult ER experiencing two heroin overdoses one of which died, numerous convicts being brought in and several children with even more severe disabilities. The doctors and nurses aren't trained to deal with these children. It was a battle to get a psychiatrist to see him and every time you would ask someone a question you would hear a different story. My grandson was finally moved to Pediatrics ER where he sat for four more days waiting for an open neuro psyche bed to open. So after being in the ER for over a week waiting for a room making an already anxious child even worse and being given antipsychotic meds at
night he was finally transferred to Shepard Pratt. The ER had at
least 5 special needs children at a time in the ER waiting for a bed. There are 14 neuro psyche beds in MD and every ER in the state has children waiting for a bed. One child waited 330 hour for a bed this is unacceptable! And we wander why our children are killing themselves. I am in no way blaming the nurses and doctors in the ER this is not what they are trained for but no child should ever just sit in an ER because there is no room for them where they need to be. Wake up Leaders of Maryland we have an epidemic of children with special needs who need help and you are letting them down. Shameful. No excuses.