On February 18, 2022, this report was posted as an MMWR Early Release on the MMWR website (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr).In 2021, a national emergency* for children's mental health was declared by several pediatric health organizations, and the U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory † on mental health among youths. These actions resulted from ongoing concerns about children's mental health in the United States, which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (1,2). During March-October 2020, among all emergency department (ED) visits, the proportion of mental health-related visits increased by 24% among U.S. children aged 5-11 years and 31% among adolescents aged 12-17 years, compared with 2019 (2). CDC examined changes in U.S. pediatric ED visits for overall mental health conditions (MHCs) and ED visits associated with specific MHCs (depression; anxiety; disruptive behavioral and impulse-control disorders; attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; trauma and stressor-related disorders; bipolar disorders; eating disorders; tic disorders; and obsessive-compulsive disorders [OCD]) during 2019 through January 2022 among children and adolescents aged 0-17 years, overall and by sex and age. After declines in weekly visits associated with MHCs among those aged 0-17 years during 2020, weekly numbers of ED visits for MHCs overall and for specific MHCs varied by age and sex during 2021 and January 2022, when compared with corresponding weeks in 2019. Among adolescent females aged 12-17 years, weekly visits increased for two of nine MHCs during 2020 (eating disorders and tic disorders), for four of nine MHCs during 2021 (depression, eating disorders, tic disorders, and OCD), and for five of nine MHCs during January 2022 (anxiety, trauma and stressor-related disorders, eating disorders, tic disorders, and OCD), and overall MHC visits during January 2022, compared with 2019. Early identification and expanded evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies are critical to improving children's and adolescents' * https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/child-and-adolescent-healthy-mentaldevelopment/aap-aacap-cha-declaration-of-a-national-emergency-inchild-and-adolescent-mental-health/ † https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-youth-mental-healthadvisory.pdf
is a collaboration among CDC, local, and state health departments, and federal, academic, and private sector partners. https://www.cdc.gov/nssp/index.html † To reduce artifactual impact from changes in reporting patterns, analyses were restricted to facilities with a coefficient of variation ≤40 and average weekly informative discharge diagnosis ≥75% complete with consistent discharge diagnosis code formatting throughout 2019-2022. Visits from 1,674 facilities from 41 states were eligible to be included in the study. All facilities from three counties in California (El Dorado, Plumas, and Yosemite),
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