Reply to Please walk me through what happens when you bring a suicidal child to the ER

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sometimes there is a different method of attack because he's suicidal. They might give meds and take some more time to address  the issue if not life threatening.   :cry: [/quote]

My kid who spent years being suicidal and had many attempts has been to many different ERs. Not once were meds given in the ER. They were medically stabilized and then a mental health specialist came in to do an eval. They were always admitted because of the severity of the issues, but admission isn’t a guarantee. Lots of people are discharged if the mental health tech does not see the patient as a danger to self or others with a plan and a means to carry it out. But there was always a long delay because lots of psych hospitals don’t do admissions after hours so we had to wait in the ER until the next morning.

As an aside, reason for different ERs is that IME, each one has a particular hospital or hospitals they admit to. Since we were having so many hospitalizations, I wanted to see if a different program might be more successful. Also when your kid goes by ambulance you don’t have any way in the matter of where they go. [/quote]

Agreed. Meds have not been part of our experience in the ER. That comes from psychiatric care after the ER. The ER is all about triage and stabilizing and deciding next steps - in patient or outpatient.

One thing has seemed standard operating procedure at suburban is safety: security officer wands the child, they have to put all their clothes and belongings in a bag at nurses station, a staff person watches them 24-7 even if parent is there and the door has to be open. They basically don’t take any chances kid could hurt themselves.

There is a medical work up too- standard bloodwork for metabolic stuff plus toxins and urine analysis.

triage by nurse, evaluation by pediatrician and then a long wait for evaluation by crisis counselor

If in patient is decided, be prepared to board in the ER

Suburban doesn’t have adolescent psychiatric beds so they have to arrange a transfer (which happens by ambulance btw). We had terrible experience with Dominion but Children’s apparently hasn’t taken Suburban transfers in a long time bc their ER is so full (what we were told). So if you want Childrens, maybe wise to start at their ER.

Good luck to everyone in this situation. You are not alone.[/quote]

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