The initial explanation for why the teenager needed to be admitted seemed very flimsy to me. Finally, the office pediatrician came clean. The girl is an honor roll student, high achieving but currently overwhelmed by events in her life. She cannot handle being at home, but there is nowhere else for her to go for the weekend. Come Monday morning, the primary care physician (PCP) has arranged for her acceptance into a local mental health facility where she could get the care she needs. The prognosis was excellent. Her entire future could be markedly improved with just a little help getting through these current troubles. I thought about the patient down the hall. My partner had admitted her 2 days ago for acute-on-chronic abdominal pain, shortly after her third normal CT scan in 6 months. I strongly doubted that that patient had any more business being in a hospital than this latest admission – except, of course, for all the profit the hospital was making on the imaging. On reflection, I decided the PCP’s request no longer seemed so out of place.
The latest emergency department drama on TV has a tagline, “In the ER when there are more patients than resources, it’s called Code Black.” It contains scenes of mopping up bloody floors in the trauma bay. I’ve worked in an ED that was a major portal into a nearby pediatric mental health facility. The major traumas I cared for didn’t bleed from their life-threatening emotional wounds. Multiple times per week, children from across the city were brought in for evaluation. A few needed a toxicology work-up for ingestions. A few more needed some glue or sutures for very superficial self-inflicted forearm lacerations. Mostly I provided a medical screening before getting those teenagers moved as quickly as possible to a team of specialists who could help them. In some parts of this country that can take days.
Dr. Kevin T. Powell
On Oct. 5, 2015, California’s governor signed a state law permitting physician-assisted suicide. It is now the fifth state allowing that option. The pros and cons have been endlessly debated by ethicists. A brief Google search can find the philosophical arguments. I recommend a June 22, 2015, New Yorker article entitled, “The Death Treatment” by Rachel Aviv to provide a broad narrative perspective. Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act was passed 20 years ago, so it provides some scientific data. There are now 100 deaths per year under that Oregon act. The state also has 700 suicides yearly. So the leading method of suicide in Oregon, by a wide margin, continues to be used by people who are not terminally ill. That was the method of choice recently for my cousin. There was nothing dignified about it. My favorite actor, Robin Williams, in the movie “World’s Greatest Dad,” had the line, “If you’re that depressed, reach out to someone, and remember suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems.” Five years later he took his own life.
I do enjoy debating the nuances of physician-assisted suicide with other ethicists, but I don’t confuse those academic exercises with addressing the real world problem of endemic suicide. Nationwide, there are 41,000 suicides each year, with about 5,000 in the 15- to 24-year age group. In comparison, 10,000 children annually will get cancer, but only 1,250 children will die of it. There will be about 900 pediatric recipients of lifesaving heart or liver transplants. With all this wealth, knowledge, and technology, the United States should be able to provide better treatment of mental illness. Parity of mental health services became law under President Clinton in 1996, repeated as law under President Bush in 2008, and affirmed again under President Obama. But those political promises have yet to bear fruit in real life. The system remains overloaded. For the sake of the children and young adults, pediatricians must promote expansion of mental health services.
Dr. Powell is a pediatric hospitalist and clinical ethics consultant living in St. Louis. Dr. Powell said he had no relevant financial disclosures or conflicts of interest.