If you do not have significant resources available to you in terms of money, time, and connections, it is possible that the only way to get any treatment for your child is to turn them over to the state.
That’s no way to care for the next generation.
As societies, we don’t care enough to do the hard work required to change it. If we cared, we wouldn’t have years and years of stories like this. We wouldn’t have millions of people having to choose between eating and their mental health or being dumped into a system that offers no help.
But we do, and very few leaders are even talking about making the massive investments necessary to overhaul the system.
Because we don’t care.
I think there are two things that stood out to me about this research.
Young people who need help aren’t getting it. Part of the reason why there is no diagnosis is that many of these young people are suffering in silence. They are vulnerable for a number of reasons but we are not taking the steps to identify the issues and get them help. That’s on all of us. It appears to be a larger issue with minority kids, males, and other groups who historically have been underserved my mental health resources.
Guns are so effective at killing that kids with access to guns only need to consider it one time. It’s hard to get to a diagnosis when the method works so often. Only 33% of those lost to suicide by gun had a diagnosis, compared to 40% overall.
Most of all, the article clearly shows no easy answers. There isn’t one thing broken in this system that can be quickly turned around and made better. It’s everything: government funding, insurance coverage, a lack of people to treat patients, a confusing and frustrating system to find help, and a system so under-resourced that kids are sent to facilities 5-6 hours away from their parents.
You don’t fix that overnight. You surely don’t fix it by ignoring the system and avoiding talking about serious mental health issues because they make us feel uncomfortable. That’s why people are out here dying instead of getting help.
We all deserve access to resources that would help us avoid becoming a danger to ourselves. These resources shouldn’t be limited to people like me, who are lucky enough to have family support to help cover the extra costs, and they shouldn’t require that we wait around for people to reach the point of needing to be hospitalized before we offer them any. That middle ground is full of people who deserve better.
As a white person, I don’t generally have much to say about other groups. It’s not my place to talk about the hows and whys of the reluctance of black Americans to seek out mental health resources.
I do, however, know that there is a gap in the availability of treatment for most minority groups in the US and that it’s important for members of every group to talk about mental health.
