CHILD WATCHÔ COLUMN

THE CRISIS OF CHILDREN’S UNMET MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS

By Marian Wright Edelman

The Children’s Defense Fund is calling for health and mental health coverage for all children in America in 2007. It is a moral disgrace and practical disaster that more than nine million children--one in nine--are uninsured and that millions more are underinsured.  Many Americans already understand something about the crisis of children and families without health insurance coverage, because so many of us know someone who doesn’t have health insurance or who’s been in danger of losing their coverage because of job loss or other stress.  That’s long been a problem far too big to ignore.  But many people may not know as much about the enormous unmet need for child mental health treatment in our country and the serious consequences it has for so many of our nation’s children.

Both critical and unmet health and mental health needs were laid bare by Hurricane Katrina, where there was and continues to be so much family and child suffering. The thirteen months since the storm have been an unending nightmare for thousands of Katrina’s children denied the chance to share their bad memories and clear their psyches battered by loss of family members, friends, homes, schools, and neighborhoods.  Experts testified at a July Congressional hearing in New Orleans that mental health needs are a critical concern for survivors.  Yet although the number of children with unresolved mental health problems has increased, there are far too few mental health professionals and only ten mental health pediatric and youth beds available in New Orleans.  Katrina’s children are an extreme example of immediate need for mental health services that are far too scarce.  But they are far from alone.

Nationally, one in five children and adolescents has a mental illness severe enough to cause some level of impairment. Only about one in three receives mental health services in any given year.  Not surprisingly, poor children and children of color are overrepresented in the number of children with unmet mental health needs.  A national study of children two to 14 years old who are involved in the child welfare system, either at home or in foster care, also found that while nearly half of them had clinically significant emotional or behavioral problems, only about one-quarter received mental health treatment.  Imagine not getting the help you need when you have suffered the trauma of abuse and neglect and the trauma of being separated from family and community.

 What happens to children whose mental health needs go unmet?  Lack of access to and lack of availability of community-based mental health services are causing thousands of poor children to be sucked into the Cradle to Prison PipelineÒ crisis every year.  One of the reasons there are so many children with mental health needs in the child welfare system is that many desperate families have had to turn to that system—or to the juvenile justice system—as their only chance for help.  The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) reports thousands of families have been forced to relinquish custody of their children to the child welfare or juvenile justice systems in hopes of getting them treatment for unmet mental health needs. 

A recent Congressional study commissioned by Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) also reports that two-thirds of juvenile detention facilities in 47 states are holding children solely because they need mental health services unavailable in their communities.  Over a six-month period in 2003, nearly 15,000 incarcerated children waited for community mental health services in their states, some as young as seven.  Other studies report that as many as three-fourths of incarcerated youths have mental health disorders and about one in five has a severe disorder.  Studies also show that given the same behavioral symptoms, more Black than White youths are incarcerated and more White than Black youths are placed in mental health institutions.

This is unconscionable.  How can we tolerate or justify locking up our children because our nation is unwilling to give them the help they need?  Who chooses to tell a desperate parent that we won’t provide treatment for a child but will provide a space in a detention center instead?  It’s time to change course.  But our nation won’t change its priorities unless a critical mass of citizens demands it.  Black and Latino leaders have a special responsibility to be at the forefront of this movement, because it’s our children who are disproportionately left crying for help that doesn’t come.  Please join our campaign to get prenatal, health, and mental health coverage for every child in 2007.  And don’t take no for an answer. 

Marian Wright Edelman is President and Founder of the Children's Defense Fund and its Action Council whose Leave No Child Behind^® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

Jodi Reid

Children's Defense Fund

Media Associate

(202) 662-3602

Fax: (202) 662-3550

Be a voice for children! Visit CDF's website at: www.childrensdefense.org.