PARKLAND, Wash. — More than 220 people, including school district, behavioral, and hospital leaders agree more resources are needed to fully address the mental health crisis for kids.

They all met inside a ballroom on the Pacific Lutheran University campus on Monday to share ideas, and potential solutions to offset a dramatic increase.

“We had around a 400% increase in the number of kids that were coming in with mental health crises into our emergency room who were boarding, because there was no safe place to discharge,” said Dr. Chris Ladish, who is the Assistant Vice President at the Bessler Center for Community Child Health at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital.

The meeting was long planned before the Attorney General, and dozens of states filed suit against Meta over allegations that the social media giant targeted kids under 13 negatively impacting their social and emotional development. The summit was organized by Kids Mental Health of Pierce County and Ashley Mangum.

“Are kids looking at social media for positive validation or social connections? Are they looking forward to build their self-esteem, right? Because that’s not going to be the place that you’re going to find those things,” Mangum said matter-of-factly after she stepped outside the day-long series of events.

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Mangum started the summit back in 2018 and before the pandemic exacerbated some of the long-standing issues in the community.

Tovah Denaro was a presenter and said social media has long been an issue for kids.

“What we are seeing with social media is that every time we are getting a notification on our phone, we are getting a false, a superficial hit of dopamine. This is affecting kids before the age of 13 more significantly than adults,” said Denaro, “For kiddos under the age of 13, that limbic system and that prefrontal cortex is not yet developed. The brain is literally being hijacked by these hormones that they shouldn’t be. That shouldn’t be overwhelming the brain as it is with social media.”

School district representatives filled the room, and noted how they’ve seen needs exceed resources in smaller towns in the county.

“We’ve see a definite increase in anxiety and depression,” said Jeannie Larberg of the Sumner Bonney Lake School District. She’s worked there 23 years. “We need to have a better understanding we have two different systems. And sometimes because we have two different systems, we don’t know quite how to collaborate.”

Claudia Miller, of the Franklin Pierce School District said COVID exacerbated the issues. “There’s the social skills of reading body language, or making friends and connecting with peers and being able to read situations. A lot of those things that didn’t happen when COVID hit,” said Miller. “Kids didn’t get to learn some of those soft skills that often are learned through one-on-one human interaction.”

They all seemed to welcome the lawsuit’s attention to the impact of social media, but Ladish was quick to note that is only one of the issues that has contributed to the complexity of it all, pointing climate change, gun violence, racism and overall phone usage as contributing factors too.

Ladish also said having such an open dialogue between community partners helps establish some guidelines too when talking with kids.

“I think dealing with the stigma is one and looking at prevention,” Ladish said, but added, “Rather than expecting kids to come to us, we need to go to where the kids are and so if they’re at school, if they’re in community centers, that’s where we need to be serving youth, rather than waiting for them to try to come in to see us in artificial environments.”

“We talk about cardiac health, we talk about oral health, we talk about our vision, mental health is just another aspect of health. These are all systems and we’ve spent far too much time putting them into two vast buckets of physical health and mental health and I think we need to stop doing that,” Ladish said.

This story is part of a a year long KOMO News initiative to raise awareness about youth behavioral health needs, and solutions.