Pediatric emergency medicine fellow Dr. Anna Abrams published an article showing that mental health-related emergency department visits among children at 41 children's hospitals increased from 2012-2016, disproportionally affecting minority children. 

At the 41 children's hospitals studied, there were 242,036 mental health-related emergency department visits, representing 160,656 unique patients. On a per-population basis, this is equivalent to 42.8 mental health-related ED visits per 100,000 US children. Between 2012-16, the population based rate of mental health-related visits increased
2012: 33.31 [32.92–33.70]
2016: 49.94 [49.46–50.41]

Non-Hispanic (NH) Black children had higher rates of visits per 100,000 children compared with NH-white children (66.1 vs 41.5; adjusted relative risk, 1.54 [1.50–1.59]).  Every racial/ethnic group experienced an increase in rate of presentation over the study period; Hispanics experienced a significantly larger increase compared with NH-white children (P < 0.05).

Approximately 7% of unique patients had 3 or more mental health-related visits, differing by race/ethnicity (8.75% non-Hispanic [NH]-Black vs 7.01% NH-White; adjusted odds ratio 1.14 [1.03, 1.26]).