Experts gave the Bay State high marks for combating poverty and boosting educational achievement. However, the report also found an increase of more than 50 percent in children ages 3 to 17 with anxiety or depression between 2016 and 2020, nearly double the national average. (The rate of anxiety and depression increased about 25.5 percent during those years, according to an analysis of pages 7 and 8 of the data book, with data taken from the National Survey of Children’s Health of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; in Massachusetts, the increase was 50.8 percent.)
“On any given day there are hundreds of kids who need inpatient care, who have gone to an emergency room seeking help,” she said, “and they wait there days, weeks, and sometimes months for access to a bed.”
Governor Charlie Baker signed a comprehensive mental-health bill (S.3097) last month that sets up a dashboard to manage psychiatric beds and appropriates funds for school-based behavioral health, among other things.
McGeown credited Massachusetts’s top overall score to its success in getting almost all children covered by health insurance, as well as targeted supports to schools and low-income families during the pandemic.
Leslie Boissiere, vice president for external affairs at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, said the nation’s recovery remains uneven, with continued economic hardship, both in highly urban and rural areas.
Priorities, she said, include “Enacting policies that we know can lift children out of poverty and also can secure the financial security of low-income families. Things like expansion of the Child Tax Credit. Putting resources in the hands of low-income families, so that they can provide for the basic needs of their children.”
The report recommends expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, which provides cash supports to low-income families.
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