Almost 6,000 local parents reported their kids' health concerns. Here's what they said

Nov. 2—More than half of North Texas parents said it was impossible or difficult to find mental health care for their kids in the last year, according to a survey of more than 5,700 parents and caregivers from Tarrant and seven neighboring counties.

Parents and caregivers reported the challenge of finding mental health care during the second year of a pandemic that has brought immense challenges to children and teenagers.

Young people in the U.S. have had to grapple with virtual schooling, the home life stressors that have accompanied the pandemic's massive disruption, and, for more than 140,000 children, losing a primary or secondary caregiver to COVID-19 itself, according to research published in October.

"We've seen such an increase in anxiety and depression, compared to national and state estimates, but that's particularly more so with the older teens," said Blair Williams, a community health analyst with Cook Children's Center for Children's Health, about what the new local data reveals.

The data was published Tuesday by the Center for Children's Health. The data is part of the health care system's ongoing process to analyze the barriers as well as the progress in keeping local children safe, healthy and protected from harm. Cook Children's leaders will publish the complete report, known as a needs assessment, in February. Like all nonprofit health systems, Cook Children's is required to publish a needs assessment report every three years.

Parents surveyed by the research team reported higher diagnoses of anxiety, depression, learning disabilities, and behavior or conduct problems than state or national averages.

When parents were asked whether a health care provider had ever told them their child had a mental health conditions, 19% of parents surveyed said they had been told their children had anxiety and 10% said they had been told their children had depression.

Researchers asked more than 5,700 parents in the region the same set of questions to gather the data, including more than 2,700 parents in Tarrant County. The other counties included were Denton, Parker, Wise, Hood, Johnson, Collin and Grayson counties.

The full report will not be published until February. But in previous years, Tarrant County parents have said the main reason their children did not receive mental health care was because it wasn't covered by insurance, wait lists were too long, or that they couldn't afford the cost or the provider didn't take Medicaid health insurance.

The survey released Tuesday was also accompanied by a survey of more than 300 community leaders in the North Texas area, who similarly identified mental health as their primary concern for local children and families.

The center also published the results of a survey of more than 200 people considered "hard to reach." Included in this group were parents who are homeless and parents that have one or more undocumented family member in their household.

The surveys asked parents to evaluate their children's health across multiple topics, including oral health, safety, access to health care and health insurance, and more.

Other findings of the survey include:

— Fewer parents of older children said they stored guns in the home in a locked area. Of parents surveyed, 90% of parents of children under the age of six said the guns in the household were "always" locked up, but only 77 percent of parents of children between the ages of 12 and 17 reported doing the same. Securely storing guns in homes has been repeatedly identified as a key step toward reducing unintentional shootings and suicides among children and teenagers.

— Among parents who are either homeless or had at least one undocumented family member, parents reported high levels of "adverse childhood events," the official term for certain events — like violence, abuse, and other disruptions — that can be traumatic for children. Among the more vulnerable families surveyed by researchers, 42 percent said their children had experienced two or more of these events in the last year. The survey of the vulnerable families is not considered a representative sample, but still indicates the additional burdens these families have grappled with in the last year. Among the representative families surveyed in all eight counties, about 14 percent said their children had experienced two or more of these events, which includes things like the death or a parent, seeing violence in the home or neighborhood, or experiencing racism. These events are capable of triggering "toxic stress" in children. That prolonged or intense stress can affect children's health throughout the rest of their lives, and can even change the functioning of children's brains, according to a landmark 2012 study.

Progress has been in some areas, Cook Children's leaders said. The percent of families who said they had to take their child to the emergency room to get treatment for asthma declined, from 15 percent in 2018 to 8 percent this year.

The survey results were published in a new online dashboard Tuesday. In the coming months, the dashboard will be updated so that the survey results can be grouped by the race and ethnicity of respondents, as well as by age, county and household income.

Although enough parents were surveyed to produce a representative sample of the entire region, the survey results aren't true measures of health indicators. Like all surveys, the data relies on the parent's perception of their child's health.

This story was originally published November 2, 20215:08 PM.

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