Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are more often rushed to the emergency department (ED) for a psychiatric crisis than others, a new study reveals.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that leads to significant social, communication and behavioral changes. A team of researchers from Kennedy Krieger Institute found mental health-related emergency department visits among autistic children nine times higher than children not having the disorder.
Senior study author Dr. Roma Vasa and colleagues found aggressive behaviors to be one of the leading causes of ED visits among autistic children. For the study, researchers examined 3,974,332 ED visits, included in the National Emergency Department Sample. Of the total patients aged between three and 17, more than 13,000 children were autistic.
Details about the children's ED visits like - mood, anxiety and psychotic disorders, suicide, self-injury and aggressive behavior were collected from International Classification of Disease (ICD) billing diagnoses.
At the end of the study, investigators found the lack of proper outpatient mental health care playing an important role in this occurrence.
"This finding of higher rates of emergency room visits among children with autism demonstrates that many children with autism aren't receiving sufficient outpatient mental health care to prevent and manage the type of crises that are driving these families to seek urgent help," Vasa, a child psychiatrist in Kennedy Krieger Institute's Center for Autism & Related Disorders, said in a news release.
"These findings should highlight the urgent need for better comprehensive outpatient mental health care and insurance coverage for children with autism, along with greater education and training for emergency medical staff."
Parents of autistic children with a private medical insurance were found 58 percent more likely to make an ED visit for a psychiatric crisis than parents insured through state medical programs.
"We think this is because private insurance plans often exclude autism from behavioral health coverage, have few in-network providers or place restrictive limits on the amount of mental health expenses that they will reimburse," said Luther Kalb, first study author and a research scientist in Kennedy Krieger Institute's Center for Autism & Related Disorders.
The findings of the study have been published in the journal Pediatric Emergency Care.
