Crisis in the Pediatric Population

Session 10 of the Northeast PA AHEC Navigating Youth Behavior Virtual Lunch & Learn Series

Date: January 14, 2026

Speaker:Dr. Hillwig-Garcia

Description: Pediatric PCPs increasingly face acute mental health crises but often lack standardized workflows, assessment tools, and referral pathways. This session reviews crisis trends, teaches evidence-based risk assessment, outlines PCP roles in immediate and follow-up care, and provides practical clinic strategies for managing both common and uncommon pediatric behavioral health emergencies.

SpeakerDr. Garcia is a child and adolescent psychiatry consult liaison physician. She is boarded in general adult psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry and has had additional years of mentorship and training in consult liaison psychiatry. She attended medical school at Penn State Hershey College of Medicine and completed her residency and fellowship at Penn State Hershey Medical Center. Dr. Garcia is the director of child and adolescent consult liaison services in the department of psychiatry. She has been a part of the Penn State Hershey Medical Center community since starting medical school at Penn State over 24 years ago. She has taught and mentored a variety of trainees across multiple settings and currently sees patients at our children’s hospital, in the pediatric emergency department and in our outpatient child and adolescent psychiatry and behavioral health clinic. She is also part of the TiPS (telephonic psychiatry consult service) providing phone consults to primary care offices. She has been involved in a variety of research projects, presentations and publications. She has clinical expertise in pediatric medical psychiatry, in complex cases that are challenging to solve. She has grown Penn State Health Children’s Hospital’s pediatric consult liaison psychiatry service into an essential part of care of children and teens at Hershey Medical Center and is an integral part of educating a variety of providers while caring for some of the most complex interdisciplinary cases. ”