June 4, 2012

Mayo-Led Group Will Focus on Children’s Mental Health

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The Mayo Clinic will lead a new partnership to provide mental health training to doctors.  The collaboration is a response to Minnesota's severe shortage of child mental health experts. There are only 81 child psychiatrists in the state, which means that patients who may need psychotropic medications must often rely on family physicians or pediatricians for a prescription.  Mayo psychiatrist Peter Jensen says these powerful drugs can help children, but they can also be harmful or unnecessary in many cases. "We've seen these many-fold increases in cocktails of medicines, if you will, without an adequate evidence base, with medicines that cause side effects, in an untrained population of physicians," Jensen says.

 

MPR by Lorna Benson

Tags: Dr. Peter Jensen, mental health, MPR, Pediatrics, Psychology and Psychiatry

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