BOSTON -- Children in crisis who need psychiatric care can end up living in emergency rooms for days before getting it, according to an investigation by WCVB-TV in Boston.

Video: Kids In Crisis Stuck In E.R.

Deb Tilly's son, Ryan, spent 11 days in a Massachusetts emergency room with a security guard outside his door. His mother said there was no choice but to bring him there.

"He was not safe around himself. He was not safe in the house with us. We were just trying to get him some help," said Tilly.

On the 11th day, the nurse called Tilly with an alarming report.

"He was very despondent, on the floor in a fetal position. He was crying out to me and was not eating," said Tilly.

Nancy LaFarge's son, Michael, was also stuck in a community hospital emergency room for five days. He spent his 16th birthday in a small room with a strap-down bed.

"He did say when he was there that he would rather die than be there again," said LaFarge.

They call it boarding, when psychiatric patients end up living in the ER for days or weeks on end. They're essentially trapped, stuck until they can be moved to get the specialized care they need.

"There's no treatment. It's a holding tank," said LaFarge.

Dr. Nathan McDonald runs the emergency room at Lowell General Hospital.

"It's a huge problem. Seven, 12, 15 days is not uncommon," said McDonald. "If I have to search for a bed in an (intensive care unit) in Boston for more than an hour, that would be unusual. But for psychiatric patients, somehow the system has lost that sense of urgency."

The day the station was at Lowell General Hospital, six patients, mostly children, were waiting for inpatient psychiatric admission. That back-up has a huge impact on everyone waiting for emergency care. McDonald estimates that ERs can handle 30 percent fewer patients when kids in crisis don't have anywhere else to go.

"Literally, we can have 50 percent of the staff involved in a single case," said McDonald. "That translates to a longer wait in the waiting room and fewer beds available."

In the state, there are 327 beds for young psychiatric patients, but few can handle the most complex cases like Ryan Tilly.

Doctors told the station that another problem is psychiatric units pick and choose whom they'll admit, sometimes turning away disruptive children. Insurers contract with certain hospitals, so that limits admissions, too.

"I believe that insurance is the tail that wags the dog," said Lisa Lambert, a mental health advocate. "What the insurer decides to pay for has a huge impact on what the child gets."

The LaFarges waited five days for insurance approval.

"They weren't able to be reached, so we stayed overnight until Friday. He stayed in Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Finally, on Monday night, they found him a bed," said LaFarge.

The state is making improvements. It hopes to add in-home support, outpatient services and mobile crisis teams. The changes are mandated by a ruling in a lawsuit that argued the state gave a group of mental health patients substandard care.

"We hope to prevent children from going to the emergency room by having the mobile crisis teams go to their homes or schools," said Kathy Betts, deputy assistant secretary for the state's Health and Human Services Agency.

But if they're funded, the programs would only benefit the 30 percent of children on Mass Health, the state's Medicaid program. It leaves out the 70 percent with private insurance.

"It's almost like we're designing a two-tiered mental health system for children," Lambert said. "If you have Medicaid, you can get to have these services that are going to be far better for children, tailored for children. If you don't, you get what else is there, what's left."

Lambert would like to see a centralized system in the ERs to track available psychiatric beds in real time. But for now, all ER doctors can do is keep patients safe, and wait.

"It makes me sad, very sad," said Tilly. "Just horde them into a room and leave them there. Maybe something will come up tomorrow."