VIDEO:
April 7, 2026 ~ Bridge Michigan reporters Jordan Hermani and Eli Newman join Kevin Dietz to discuss the mental health crisis that kids around our state are facing.
LANSING ~ As mental health facilities in Michigan face strain and closures, more teens and children are being sent out of state for care.
The phenomenon was highlighted in a recent article published by Bridge Michigan, which found that the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the increase in out-of-state care due to a lack of resources. A report from the Department of Health and Human Services showed that 152 youth were in Michigan’s direct-placement program as of September 2025. This was more than double the number of children just two years prior
“The impetus of this investigation started with seeing this kind of snowballing effect, where we were watching these facilities close,” said Bridge Michigan reporter Jordan Hermani. “We were watching these parents left in the lurch, looking for mental health care that was hundreds of miles away, either at another place in Michigan or even thousands of miles away out of state, where they couldn’t be able to see their child, who could be in the midst of a severe mental health crisis.”
These massive distances between parents and children in these out-of-state facilities as far away as Texas, Hawaii, and Arizona create challenges in planned visits and children feeling isolated, according to the article.
The extent of the trend is not fully known, though, with Hermani adding that courts sending youth out of state through court orders are not required to share data with the state. Bridge Michigan reporter Eli Newman added that there is no concrete reporting on families navigating mental health care through their health insurance, further obscuring the breadth of the issue.
As to what is causing the crisis with Michigan health care, a combination of negative social media influence on children and the COVID-19 pandemic drove more kids to these services while driving out these care workers.
“Because of some of the stringent emergency orders, (and) staffing at these facilities that were essentially forced to quarantine also had a lot of difficulty working there,” Newman said. “If you could figure out a job that wasn’t in a congregate setting like that with a difficult population to deal with. We’re talking about kids that are having an acute mental health crisis (that’s) not an easy field to work in, so there was a lot of staff that dropped off at that time.“
