“In the universe of worries that parents of mentally ill children face, a needlessly vexing one is the inadequacy and unpredictability of care in hospital emergency rooms. Some children in psychiatric distress get stuck in emergency rooms for days because there are no available beds. Some children are sent home. Some are locked in rooms. … As the Globe’s Carey Goldberg reported recently, a dozen children faced such delays in recent weeks. … These emergency room traffic jams are part of troubling national trends. Earlier this year, the American College of Emergency Physicians branded ‘boarding,’ the warehousing of patients in emergency rooms, as a national problem of overcrowding.” (06/26/08)