(Radio Iowa) – The University of Iowa’s Scanlan Center for School Mental Health is expanding its services to offer psychiatric care to students ages ten and up anywhere in Iowa. U-I professor and psychiatrist Dr. Amanda Elliott will lead the new initiative, for which she says there’s great need. Elliott says a federal study found nearly 90-percent of Iowa counties are considered mental health care professional shortage areas. “They consider a ‘sufficient’ amount of child psychiatrists to be 47 per 100,000 kids,” Elliott says. “On average for the entire state of Iowa right now, there’s eight per 100,000 kids, so much of the state is very much under-served.”

Most of rural Iowa is a mental health care desert, as Elliott says is evidenced in a 2022 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “There were only 62 child psychiatrists in the entire state. So with 99 counties, that’s not even one child psychiatrist per county in the state,” Elliott says, “and of those, the psychiatrists are kind of centrally located, so there’s 14 counties out of the 99 that currently have a child psychiatrist that lived in that county.”

The services will start, Elliott says, with an interview-based assessment of a student’s symptoms, past histories and past treatments, and determining if there are any medication options. She says school districts would set up a tele-health visit on-site along with a primary care provider who’s involved with the student. “Rather than starting with a child psychiatrist and continuing to follow long-term,” Elliott says, “our goal is to get students started on medication, if they’re indicated, stabilized, and then transition them back to their pediatrician or family physician to continue ongoing management.”

Studies find one in six American kids between the ages of six and 17 experience a mental health disorder each year, while suicide is the 2nd-leading cause of death for teens and young adults. Elliott says the Iowa City-based clinic is offering psychotherapy services to students — and to teachers. The model is designed to improve access to mental health professionals for kids as young as ten and up through high school graduation. “Things like ADHD, depression and anxiety certainly start in the elementary school age population,” Elliott says. “When students have an opportunity to engage in treatment earlier, it improves their academic function, it improves their social function, and sets them up for a greater pathway to success throughout their entire lifetime.”

The U-I’s Scanlan Center is already a state leader in student mental health. In the past year, it provided nearly 13-hundred clinical service appointments and more than one-thousand counseling appointments for students in 72 school districts across 60 Iowa counties. Elliott says a majority of Scanlan’s clients are from rural communities. Referrals come through school mental health professionals or A-E-As.

For more information, contact the center via email at: scsmh-clinic@uiowa.edu.

On the web at https://scsmh.education.uiowa.edu/