THURSDAY, May 21, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Pediatric primary care physician (PCP) visits with mental health (MH) issues increased from 2014 to 2023 in Massachusetts, according to a research letter published online May 18 in JAMA Network Open.
Kerrin M. Gallagher, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the Boston University School of Public Health, and colleagues estimated temporal trends in pediatric primary care visits that included MH issues using all-payer data from Massachusetts in a cohort study. The study sample included 37,659,240 person-quarters, representing 1,848,249 unique children aged 1 to 18 years.
The researchers observed an increase in the rate of PCP visits with any MH diagnosis, from 5.9 visits per 100 children in quarter 1 of 2014 to 9.7 visits per 100 children in quarter 1 of 2023. The absolute changes were greatest for PCP visits for anxiety (from 1.7 to 6.1 percent of PCP visits). For other diagnosis types, there were also increases seen in the percentage of PCP visits with MH diagnoses from quarter 1 of 2014 to quarter 1 of 2023, although they were smaller in magnitude, including for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (from 5.0 to 6.7 percent), depression (from 1.2 to 1.6 percent), autism spectrum disorder (from 0.5 to 2.0 percent), and trauma and stressor-related disorders (from 0.8 to 1.6 percent). The total number of all-cause PCP visits decreased slightly when population-level rates of PCP use were examined, from 58.9 to 54.8 visits per 100 children.
"Observed trends may reflect increases in the underlying prevalence of pediatric MH needs alongside increases in PCP capacity to screen for and address MH needs," the authors write.
