Articles by Laura Prager, M.D.

Laura M. Prager, M.D. is the director of the Child Psychiatry Emergency Service at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is an assistant editor for the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and a reviewer for the journals Pediatrics, Critical Care Medicine and Psychosomatics. She is the author of Suicide by Security Blanket, and Other Stories from the Child Psychiatry Emergency Service.

The Crisis In Pediatric Psychiatric Emergency Rooms

July 28, 2015

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The Crisis In Pediatric Psychiatric Emergency Rooms

Psychiatric emergency rooms are busier than you can imagine—unless you’ve been stuck in one.  In fact, there’s only one emergency room setting that’s even more so: pediatric psychiatric emergency rooms. In both urban and rural locations, on both coasts as well as in the middle of the country—literally throughout the land—psychiatric emergency rooms are bursting […]

Violent Schoolyard Scribbles: How Can Teachers, Doctors And Parents Tell If A Child’s Scary Drawings Are A Cause For Concern?

October 23, 2013

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Violent Schoolyard Scribbles: How Can Teachers, Doctors And Parents Tell If A Child’s Scary Drawings Are A Cause For Concern?

The resident, Dr. G., arrived for a four-hour shift. A pediatrician in his second year of training, he was in the midst of a rotation designed to teach him about psychiatric problems in children. One afternoon a week he joined the first year (post-graduate year II) psychiatry residents in the APS, hoping that there would […]