South Side Children’s Hospital Offers Mental And Behavioral Health Care For Young People
South Side Children’s Hospital Offers Mental And Behavioral Health Care For Young People
BY KATHERINE NEWMAN
Since 1949, Mental Health Awareness Month has been observed in the United States during the month of May and while mental health is important in every corner of the world, activists in Chicago have been begging the city to reinvest in mental health services since 2012 when half of the public mental health clinics in Chicago were closed.
Despite city services being limited, there are other institutions in the city that have robust mental and behavioral health programs that help to fill in the services gaps that were left by the shuttered public clinics. One of those institutions is La Rabida Children’s Hospital in South Shore where young people can go to access behavioral health services.
La Rabida’s behavioral health staff includes psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, licensed clinical professional counselors, postdoctoral psychology fellows, family advocates, and case managers. The hospital provides services to children and their families through a collaboration between the clinicians and the medical teams, according to information provided by La Rabida.
“When you think about the causes of death for children, specifically in the teen years, suicide is a leading cause of death,” said Gene Liebler, executive director of Behavioral Health at La Rabida. “If there was a medical condition or some sort of a disease that was a top leading cause of death we would throw tons of resources at it because it’s a threat to the well being of children and their ability to make it into adulthood.”
La Rabida has a Child Abuse and Trauma program that is designed specifically for young people who have bee exposed to traumatic events during their life which could include physical and sexual abuse, witnessing violence, and complex trauma. In addition, the clinicians who work with young people at La Rabida have special training to care for traumatized children and their families.
“If we look at the broad impacts that these types of challenges can produce, that could include lower academic performance, suicide, and lower lifetime earnings,” said Liebler. “For kids and individuals who have had a certain number of adverse events during childhood, rates for things like heart disease go up, rates of receiving sexually transmitted diseases go up, unwanted pregnancies go up, early death goes up, and substance use goes up.”
When it comes to mental and behavioral health for young people, Liebler wants parents to know that mental health conditions are not a result of bad parenting. He also wants parents to know that they can play an important role in improving a child’s mental health by providing them with support and access to care.
“Don’t look at your child’s needs as a reflection of your parenting. I think a lot of parents oftentimes feel this really profound sense of guilt if they have a child who has some form of behavioral health needs but the rates of it are so high that with there are a whole lot of really awful parents in the world or something else is going on,” said Liebler.
To learn more about La Rabida Children’s Hospital visit www.larabida.org.
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