The emergency department was never designed to be a front door for mental health care. It exists to stabilize heart attacks, set broken bones, and triage trauma. Yet every year, millions of Americans in psychiatric crisis end up in an ER — because it is open at 2 a.m., because it cannot turn them away, and too often because there is nowhere else to go.
The scale of that reliance is now measurable, and it is large. Roughly one in four adults lives with a diagnosable mental illness in a given year — any mental illness affected 23.4% of adults, about 61.5 million people, in 2024 (SAMHSA, 2025). A meaningful share of that population, especially in moments of acute distress or danger, will pass through an emergency room. The data show a system absorbing enormous demand, a striking surge among young people over the past decade, and a growing problem of patients waiting days for a bed that does not exist.
This article walks through the numbers: the overall scale of mental-health-related ER visits, emergency visits for suspected suicide attempts, the shifting adolescent picture, the decade-long youth surge, and the boarding crisis that keeps children waiting in hallways. The figures come from the CDC’s national surveillance systems and from peer-reviewed research.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7.
The Scale: Millions of Visits a Year
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks emergency department use through the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). Its estimates make clear that mental health is not a marginal reason people come to the ER — it is a substantial and recurring one.
In 2021, approximately 13.4 million emergency department visits were made by patients with any listed mental health disorder diagnosis. That represented 9.6% of all ED visits nationwide — nearly one in ten (CDC, 2023). Of those, about 5.8 million visits had a mental or behavioral condition as the primary diagnosis, meaning the mental health problem was the main reason for the encounter rather than an incidental note in the chart.
The following year told a similar story. In 2022, mental, behavioral, and neurodevelopmental disorders were the primary diagnosis at roughly 5.9 million ED visits, or 3.8% of all visits (CDC, 2023). And when the lens narrows to adults, the share climbs higher: 12.3% of all adult ED visits were mental-health-related when any listed diagnosis is counted, based on data from 2018 through 2020 (CDC, 2023).
| Measure (year) | Visits | Share of all ED visits |
|---|---|---|
| Any listed mental health diagnosis (2021) | ~13.4 million | 9.6% |
| Primary mental/behavioral diagnosis (2021) | ~5.8 million | — |
| Primary mental/behavioral/neurodevelopmental diagnosis (2022) | ~5.9 million | 3.8% |
| Adult visits, any mental health diagnosis (2018–2020) | — | 12.3% |
The gap between the “any diagnosis” and “primary diagnosis” figures is itself instructive. Mental illness frequently rides alongside another chief complaint — an overdose, an injury, a chronic medical condition made harder to manage by depression or anxiety. It is woven through the emergency caseload, not confined to a psychiatric corner of it.
Emergency Visits for Suspected Suicide Attempts
The most acute slice of this picture is emergency care for suspected suicide attempts. Using the National Syndromic Surveillance Program, which captures near-real-time data from a large share of U.S. emergency departments, the CDC counted 833,335 ED visits for suspected suicide attempts among roughly 527 million total ED visits from January 2021 through December 2025 — a rate of 15.8 per 10,000 visits (CDC, 2026).
The burden falls unevenly by sex and, above all, by age. Females accounted for 60.3% of these visits (17.4 per 10,000), while males accounted for 39.5% (13.8 per 10,000) (CDC, 2026). This mirrors a long-standing pattern in which women and girls attempt suicide more often, even though men die by suicide at far higher rates — a divergence explored in our companion piece on suicide statistics by age and in the suicidality and self-harm overview.
Adolescents stand out sharply. Teens aged 12 to 17 had both the highest number of suspected-suicide-attempt visits (207,028, or 24.8% of the total) and the highest visit proportion of any age group, at 82.2 per 10,000. Among adolescent girls specifically, the rate reached 120.0 per 10,000 — dramatically above the overall figure (CDC, 2026).
| Group (2021–2025) | Rate per 10,000 ED visits | Share of these visits |
|---|---|---|
| Overall | 15.8 | 100% |
| Females | 17.4 | 60.3% |
| Males | 13.8 | 39.5% |
| Adolescents 12–17 | 82.2 | 24.8% |
| Adolescent girls 12–17 | 120.0 | — |
The trend over these five years is genuinely encouraging in one respect and worrying in another. Overall, the suspected-suicide-attempt visit proportion declined 7.0% from 2021 to 2025, and among adolescents aged 12 to 17 it fell 20.8% — a substantial retreat from pandemic-era peaks (CDC, 2026). But the decline was not shared across the lifespan. Visits rose 15.2% among adults aged 55 to 64 and 12.3% among those 65 and older, a reminder that suicide risk in older adults deserves attention even as the youth numbers improve.
| Age group (2021→2025) | Change in visit proportion |
|---|---|
| Overall | −7.0% |
| Adolescents 12–17 | −20.8% |
| Ages 55–64 | +15.2% |
| Ages 65+ | +12.3% |
The Adolescent Picture Since the Pandemic
The improvement among teens is real, but it comes after a period of extraordinary strain — and the recovery is uneven across conditions. A separate CDC analysis tracked adolescent ED visits from January 2019 through February 2023, comparing weekly volumes against both the prior year and the pre-pandemic baseline (CDC, 2023).
By fall 2022, mean weekly adolescent ED visits had fallen relative to fall 2021 across several categories: mental health conditions were down 11%, suicide-related behaviors down 12%, and drug overdoses down 10%. That year-over-year cooling is consistent with the longer suspected-suicide-attempt decline described above.
But measured against the fall 2019 pre-pandemic baseline, the picture for adolescent girls was still elevated. Visits for suicide-related behaviors among adolescent females were 14% higher than before the pandemic, and drug overdose visits were up 16% (CDC, 2023). Most striking of all, eating-disorder visits were up 55% overall — one of the sharpest and most durable increases in the adolescent emergency data, and a signal that the pandemic’s mental health aftershocks did not resolve evenly.
The Youth Surge Over a Decade
Zoom out further and the long arc becomes unmistakable. A peer-reviewed study published in JAMA examined national trends in mental-health-related emergency visits among children, adolescents, and young adults from 2011 to 2020. Over that decade, youth mental-health-related ED visits nearly doubled — rising from 4.8 million visits, or 7.7% of all pediatric ED visits, in 2011 to 7.5 million visits, or 13.1%, in 2020 (Bommersbach et al., JAMA, 2023).
In other words, the share of young people’s emergency visits driven by mental health nearly doubled in ten years. This was not a sudden pandemic phenomenon; it was a steady, structural climb that the COVID-19 era accelerated but did not create. For the fuller context on this generation’s mental health trajectory, see our overview of youth mental health statistics.
The drivers are familiar: rising rates of depression, anxiety, and self-harm among adolescents, combined with a chronic shortage of outpatient and inpatient psychiatric capacity that pushes families toward the one setting legally obligated to see them. When suicide attempts and acute crises have nowhere else to go, they arrive at the ER.
ED Boarding: The Wait After the Crisis
Arriving at the emergency department is often not the end of the ordeal — it is the beginning of a wait. “Boarding” refers to patients who have been evaluated and need admission or transfer to a psychiatric bed but remain stuck in the ER because no bed is available. For mental health patients, and especially children, this wait can stretch from hours into days.
The numbers quantify a system out of beds. In an analysis of pediatric mental health ED visits from 2018 to 2022 that resulted in admission or transfer, about one in three — 32.1% — boarded for 12 hours or longer (Hoffmann et al., JACEP Open, 2025). These are children in psychiatric crisis, held in an environment built for acute medical emergencies, sometimes without dedicated psychiatric staff or a therapeutic setting.
The trend is moving in the wrong direction. A study in Pediatrics found that the median length of a pediatric mental health boarding stay rose from 3 days in 2017 to 4 days in 2023. And at the extreme, 350 children — about 0.3% of boarded patients — had stays exceeding 100 days (Pediatrics, 2025).
| Boarding metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Pediatric MH visits (admit/transfer) boarding 12+ hours, 2018–2022 | ~1 in 3 (32.1%) |
| Median boarding stay, 2017 | 3 days |
| Median boarding stay, 2023 | 4 days |
| Children with stays over 100 days | 350 (0.3%) |
Boarding is the clearest evidence that emergency departments have become a pressure valve for a mental health system without enough downstream capacity. The ER can identify a child in crisis and keep them safe, but it cannot manufacture the inpatient bed, the residential program, or the outpatient follow-up that the child actually needs. The result is measured in days spent waiting.
Taken together, these figures describe an emergency system doing work it was never built for — absorbing millions of psychiatric visits, catching a rising share of young people in crisis, and then holding many of them in limbo for lack of anywhere to send them. For a broader look at the forces behind these trends, see our analysis of the mental health crisis in America.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many emergency room visits are for mental health?
In 2021, about 13.4 million ED visits involved any listed mental health diagnosis — 9.6% of all emergency department visits — and roughly 5.8 million had a mental or behavioral condition as the primary diagnosis (CDC, 2023). Among adults specifically, 12.3% of all ED visits were mental-health-related from 2018 to 2020.
Are mental health ER visits among young people rising?
Yes, over the long term. Youth mental-health-related ED visits rose from 4.8 million (7.7% of pediatric visits) in 2011 to 7.5 million (13.1%) in 2020 (Bommersbach et al., JAMA, 2023). More recently, suspected-suicide-attempt visits among adolescents declined from their pandemic peaks, falling 20.8% between 2021 and 2025 (CDC, 2026).
Who has the highest rate of ER visits for suspected suicide attempts?
Adolescents aged 12 to 17 have the highest visit proportion of any age group — 82.2 per 10,000 ED visits from 2021 to 2025, rising to 120.0 per 10,000 among adolescent girls (CDC, 2026). Females overall accounted for 60.3% of these visits.
What is ER boarding for mental health patients?
Boarding occurs when a patient needs psychiatric admission or transfer but stays in the emergency department because no bed is available. About one in three pediatric mental health ED visits requiring admission or transfer boarded 12 hours or longer (2018–2022), and the median boarding stay rose from 3 to 4 days between 2017 and 2023 (Hoffmann et al., JACEP Open, 2025; Pediatrics, 2025).
Why do so many people go to the ER for mental health?
Emergency departments are open around the clock and are legally required to evaluate everyone, which makes them a default option when crises strike or when outpatient and inpatient care is unavailable. Chronic shortages of psychiatric beds and providers push acute mental health needs toward the one setting that cannot turn patients away.
What should I do in a mental health emergency?
If there is an immediate risk to life, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department. For crisis support, counseling, or help deciding what to do next, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which is free, confidential, and available 24/7.
Sources
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Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. SAMHSA Releases Annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2024 NSDUH). SAMHSA; 2025. https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/press-announcements/20250728/samhsa-releases-annual-national-survey-on-drug-use-and-health
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. NAMCS/NHAMCS communication resources (2021 emergency department data). CDC; 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/namcs/communication-resources/2023-newsletters.html
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Emergency Department Visits Related to Mental Health Disorders Among Adults, United States, 2018–2020. NHSR No. 181. CDC; 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/media/pdfs/2024/07/nhsr181.pdf
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Singichetti B, Cammack AL, et al. Emergency Department Visits for Suspected Suicide Attempts — United States, 2021–2025. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2026;75(24):304–310. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/75/wr/mm7524a1.htm
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Anderson KN, et al. Emergency Department Visits Involving Mental Health Conditions, Suicide-Related Behaviors, and Drug Overdoses Among Adolescents — United States, January 2019–February 2023. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2023;72(19):502–512. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7219a1.htm
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Bommersbach TJ, et al. National Trends in Mental Health-Related Emergency Department Visits Among Youth, 2011–2020. JAMA. 2023;329(17). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10155071/
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Hoffmann JA, et al. Boarding of Pediatric Patients with Mental Health Conditions in U.S. Emergency Departments, 2018–2022. JACEP Open. 2025;6(4):100180. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12159435/
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Pediatric Mental Health Boarding: 2017 to 2023. Pediatrics. 2025;155(3). https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/155/3/e2024068283/200986/Pediatric-Mental-Health-Boarding-2017-to-2023