Nearly  1 in 5 children each year suffers a psychiatric illness, according to research estimates. But a national shortage of medical specialists and inpatient facilities means that many still go untreated - despite  national efforts to improve mental health care.

New research is driving home the consequences. Scientific abstracts presented Monday in Las Vegas, at the  annual meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians, offer insights into how frequently patients with mental health issues land in the emergency room - often because opportunities to intervene earlier are missed. Pediatricians and child psychiatrists say children are among the hardest hit.

The researchers analyzed data compiled by the  National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, which tracked mental health visits to hospital emergency departments between 2001 and 2011.

Compared with physically ill patients, people with mental health conditions rely more on the emergency department for treatment and are more often admitted to the hospital from the ER, the scientists found. Also, they tended to be stuck in the ER longer than people who show up in the ER with physical symptoms.

Specifically, the researchers found that about 6 percent of all the emergency department patients - of all ages - had a psychiatric condition. More than 20 percent of these psychiatric patients were admitted to the hospital, compared with just over 13 percent of the medical patients. About 11 percent of these patients with mental health problems required transfer to another facility, compared with 1.4 percent of the patients with physical ailments.  Read more here.

In a poll of more than 1,700 emergency physicians, ACEP found that 48% report that psychiatric patients are held in their emergency departments waiting for an inpatient placement at least once a day, and more than 10% report that on their last shift alone, there were six to 10 patients waiting. How long is the wait? Twenty-one percent say it's two to five days.

Five days is a long time for a patient with bipolar disorder or severe depression to wait for care, and the ED-with its round-the-clock activity, artificial lighting and alarming noises-is not exactly the ideal atmosphere for recovery, said Rebecca Parker, MD, FACEP, president of ACEP, in a call with reporters. She also noted that the ED has become the "dumping ground" for psychiatric patients.   Read more here .

Giving children access to mental-health resources early in their education, however, can play a key role in mitigating negative consequences later in life, said David Anderson, the senior director of the ADHD and Behavior Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute.

"It's during childhood and adolescence where we have a large concentration of mental-health issues, and school is where many kids are spending a large portion of their day. That makes school the perfect place to focus mental-health resources," Anderson said. "Waiting too long to pay attention to student mental health can easily lead to school dropouts or other problems later in life."

Yet the majority  of the nation's youngest students don't have access to mental-health resources at school. Only 23 percent of prekindergarten programs have on-site or scheduled visits from psychiatrists or psychologists, according to the Child Mind Institute's  2016 Children's Mental Health Report . The current shortage of mental-health professionals, which is expected to continue, only exacerbates the problem. The  Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration  projects that 12,624 child and adolescent psychologists will be needed to meet demand by 2020, but a supply of only 8,312 is expected.  Read more here.

A grant from the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education provides the initial start-up funding for an innovative geriatric home visit (GHV) initiative which will pair local nurse practitioner and medical students with social workers to provide in-home behavioral screenings to older adults, leading to the development of an integrated physical, behavioral, and social support care plan.

The project broadens access to behavioral health assessments among vulnerable older adults while building a workforce of health professionals better able to identify and collaboratively manage the population's health needs using new models of care delivery.   Read more here .

In an opioid epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of people nationwide, finding and paying for addiction treatment remains a challenge for low-income Americans, particularly in the South and parts of the West.

The Affordable Care Act required Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor, to start paying for all available substance abuse treatments in 2014, a provision seen as a boon for low-income people who previously were not covered for addiction treatment.

But Medicaid coverage of the most widely used opioid addiction medication, buprenorphine, varies widely among states. Many doctors don't want to treat Medicaid patients for addiction. And red tape can make it difficult for many Medicaid recipients with addictions to get effective treatment.

All this has consequences as the nation battles the epidemic. As a group,  Medicaid enrollees suffer from opioid addiction and other substance abuse disorders at a higher rate than the general population.

"What we see in far too many Medicaid plans are restrictions and approaches to addiction treatment that are not in line with the way we treat other diseases," said Dr. Kelly Clark, president-elect of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). "Some plans require patients to wean off of their addiction medications. Would you tell a heart patient he needs to taper off of his medication after a year?"

All states reimburse for the medication, but in many places, the fees Medicaid pays doctors are considered too low and the paperwork too time-consuming to attract  an adequate number of providers willing to treat Medicaid enrollees with addictions.  Read more here.