Centene Highlights Ways to Improve Mental Healthcare for Children

The mental and behavioral healthcare crisis is striking children and adolescents, but payers can take steps to protect mental healthcare for children as well as for the adults who are responsible for their care, a Centene report shared.

“Early intervention, culturally inclusive education, and equitable access to mental healthcare is essential to safeguard the mental health of children and future generations,” the Centene report explained.

“Payers are uniquely positioned to play a critical role in advancing mental healthcare delivery through continued support of innovative technology, evidence-based clinical programs, educational programming, and community partnerships.”

The US spends $247 billion each year on healthcare for children with mental health conditions, who account for approximately one-fifth of the child population.

The report highlighted that payers can play a role in children’s mental healthcare both through health benefits and through supporting relevant legislation.

Payers can partner with schools to help facilitate opportunities to educate children about important mental healthcare topics and resources. Some payers have supported school-based presentations and discussion groups that educate students about substance abuse and the opioids crisis.

Children in the foster care system have a particularly strong need for mental health support from the health insurance industry. They have a higher demand for psychotropic medication, with ten percent taking three or more of these drugs. As a result, they require close prescription management support.

Suicide rates among teenagers are escalating. Payers can take action by covering preventative services for this population. For example, Centene used predictive analytics to assess suicide risk among foster children. Care managers followed up with suicide prevention strategies.

Additionally, Centene offers screening materials to providers in order to engage preventive services earlier and more consistently and also to facilitate coordinated care between primary care providers and mental healthcare specialists.

Telebehavioral health plays a key role in helping members access care. It also provides a means for payers to track members’ progress and patient outcomes.

Payers’ efforts to support children’s mental healthcare should include the adults in their lives who are responsible for their care, the report stressed. Nearly half of all parents have reported higher levels of stress since the start of the pandemic, the report noted. This can trickle down to children and interfere with a parent’s ability to address children’s mental health.

In order to ensure access to care for children, payers should take steps to decrease stigma around receiving mental healthcare or therapy support for their parents and caregivers. 

For example, Centene Advanced Behavioral Health distributes materials that urge parents and caregivers to look after their own mental health in addition to their children’s and helps adults identify the warning signs of mental or behavioral healthcare conditions in children.

Parents and caregivers may also require support for substance abuse care and social determinants of health needs. For example, many payers partner with large organizations like Feeding America to meet the needs of food insecure families. By ensuring that those needs are met, payers allow caregivers to focus on their children’s mental and behavioral healthcare needs.

Apart from supporting children with mental and behavioral healthcare needs and the adults responsible for their care, payers should also engage this issue on a federal and state level to support healthcare providers, strengthen the mental and behavioral healthcare provider workforce, and expand access to care.

Policies that may impact children’s mental and behavioral healthcare include federal funding initiatives that support mental and behavioral healthcare providers, legislation that safeguards continuity of coverage for children in foster care, and laws that protect and integrate telebehavioral healthcare.

“Protecting the mental wellbeing of children is vital to reduce the negative impact on the health, quality of life, and potential opportunities of future generations,” the report emphasized. “Payers are uniquely positioned to make great impact on the trajectory of mental health as children age.”