Not long ago, I got a call from a friend that her 19-year-old daughter Liv had died by suicide. Their family was shaken to the core, never to be the same. My journey with Liv started when she was a young child. Her grandmother Penni was our first volunteer at There With Care, the nonprofit I started 18 years ago in Boulder to help children and families with a child facing a critical illness.
Young Liv and her whole family volunteered over the years to ease the burdens for the families we served. Yet as close as we were to her family, I was not aware of the struggles Liv had with her mental health. That was a secret they kept close due to the stigma around mental illness, which created isolation for Liv and her family. There weren’t meal trains, deliveries of flowers and cards, or visits and check-ins from the community.
At There With Care, of the thousands of families with a child with cancer or other critical illnesses that we had delivered food and essential support, we had never knowingly provided a meal to a family who had a child in a mental health crisis. Why was this different? Why was mental health treated so differently from the other patients we served?
Mental Health is medical health, which is why in April of 2020 There With Care launched a new program bringing essential care and community to families who have a child in a life-threatening phase of mental illness including severe eating disorders and self-harm.
In this program we learned the needs of all families in a medical crisis are nearly the same. These families need support, so they can focus on their children.
They face financial stress from loss of work, siblings suffer in silence, and people around them don’t know what to say or do, so often do nothing out of fear of doing the wrong thing. We are all more aware that kids are struggling more than ever with their mental health, and so many people are trying to figure out why.
Emergency room visits for mental health crises in children skyrocketed by 140% between 2016 and 2021, according to The Colorado Children’s Campaign. And these numbers are just those that have been reported among youth 18 or younger. How many were not reported?
By sharing their story, Liv’s family shined a light on this gap and raised awareness. Families are referred to There With Care through the social workers at the Children’s Hospital Colorado Pediatric Mental Health Institute for support with food security, transportation assistance, housing stability, support for siblings, and patient and family essentials.
What’s more, a medical crisis doesn’t impact one person, it touches everyone, it threatens the wholeness of a family. This mental health support aids in stabilizing families so they can attend treatments, have financial security when one parent must leave work to care for their child in the hospital, and so much more.
There With Care’s Mental Health Program now works with an average of 30 families each day, and through this program has supported 1,275 family members during a child’s mental health crisis.
Mental health is medical health. Normalizing mental health crises and being there for others makes our shared community stronger. Join us to support these children and families.
Paula DuPré Pesmen is the founder and CEO of There With Care (therewithcare.org), a nonprofit that provides a wide range of services to families and children during a medical crisis. There With Care has offices in Denver and Boulder.
