Lindsay Tice’s Jan. 27 article highlighted the dire issue of access to child psychiatrists throughout Maine. However, Maine is not an anomaly, as the article also points out, that these highly trained specialists are in short supply nationwide.

Recognizing that there will likely never be enough child psychiatrists to provide direct service to children and adolescents throughout our large and mostly rural state, Sweetser has been exploring and implementing a variety of solutions to meet the need. We offer same-day access to assessment clinicians in all of our locations, which provides the easiest opportunity for people – children and adults – to get the help they need.

We have hired three full-time advance practice psychiatric nurses over the past two years who specialize in child psychiatry and are all under the direct supervision of a child psychiatrist. Lorinda McDonald, one of Sweetser’s new advanced practice child psychiatry nurses, has recently begun offering child psychiatry evaluations and ongoing psychiatric medication management for children and adolescents in our Lewiston office.

Sweetser has also focused on integrating efforts with primary care, and has successfully co-located a child-focused clinical social worker and child-focused case manager at Pediatric Associates in Lewiston.

Sweetser continues to dedicate resources to best preparing future primary care physicians and physician assistants with the skills to be able to diagnose and treat a number of child psychiatric disorders, at the primary care level.

We currently direct the behavioral health care curriculum for the physician assistant program at The University of New England, are a behavioral health training site for student rotations, and provide the majority of the behavioral health teaching for the second year medical students at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. Sweetser also partners with the University of Southern Maine advanced practice psychiatric nursing program in providing internships for their students.

In exploring alternate options for access to service in rural areas, Sweetser has implemented a telemedicine program. We are in the second year of providing telemedicine psychiatric consultations to adult patients of the DFD Russell federally qualified health center in Leeds, and are using the knowledge gained from this and other telemedicine projects, planning to offer child psychiatry telemedicine consultations in the future.

Recognizing that it typically takes a multidisciplinary behavioral health team approach to best meet the needs of children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders, Sweetser has developed our affiliate network, largely consisting of licensed clinical social workers and licensed clinical professional counselors, many who work in our state’s more rural areas.

Mark Kaplan, D.O.

Medical Director, Sweetser