ANOTHER VIEWPOINT: More help needed from state to reverse youth suicide trend

It is difficult for adults to even hear or read the statistics regarding youth suicide. Yet, those jarring figures can lead to better help for struggling young people.

Fifty-seven Indiana children died by suicide in one year, 2016, the Indiana Youth Institute reports. Nationwide, a total of 1,309 kids ages 5 to 12 took their own lives from 1999 to 2015, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Hoosiers ages 15 to 24. One in five Indiana high school students considered ending their life in the past year, according to the Indiana State Department of Health Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and one in six had made a plan to attempt suicide.

Those studies are sobering. Still, those numbers emerged as a basis for legislation working its way through the Indiana General Assembly this month and offering hope to families and friends of kids coping with mental illnesses.

The action could save lives and should become law.

Senate Bill 192 would extend the time for psychiatric hospitals to provide services to a Medicaid recipient child. Five days of treatment would make hospital stays more effective than the current limit of three days provided under Medicaid, health care professionals said. The extension would also reduce the number of re-admissions necessary, often one or two days after a young patient completes a three-day stay. Uninterrupted stays would be more cost efficient than short stays followed by re-admissions.

Under the current system, 90% of appeals through Medicaid for stays longer than three days get denied, said Dr. Darla Hinshaw, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Vigo County’s Harsha Behavioral Center.

Comprehensive diagnosis and treatment of young people is not an instantaneous process. “There is a lot of work that goes into determining what the issues are, and there is so much dysfunction in the families,” said Roopam Harshawat, the CEO at Harsha. “It is a team approach. We do a lot of collaboration with teachers, families and (Indiana Department of Child Services) to treat them and to get the adequate amount of information. All of this takes time.”

The proposed law would not involve an increase in state spending, according to its authors, Jon Ford, a state senator from Terre Haute, and fellow Republican Sen. Ronald Grooms of Jeffersonville. A surplus of appropriated funds gets reverted back into the state budget each year. In 2019, $182 million in unused Medicaid funds went back into the general fund. Such dollars would fund the extended psychiatric hospital stays for kids.

Each layer of help matters, given the rising number of young Hoosiers contemplating and attempting suicide. Existing efforts, and the expanded services through Senate Bill 192, can help reverse the trend and brighten the future of kids across Indiana.