In the Fall of 2013, the McSilver Institute partnered with the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy (CRISP) and Social Justice Solutions to co-sponsor a symposium in Washington, DC, on the impact of federal policies and programs on children’s mental health services. This is Part 4 of a four-part series. Click here for Parts One, Two and Three.
Focused on efforts to educate the public around the importance of early detection and treatment for children with mental health problems, Michael A. Lindsey, Ph.D., Faculty Affiliate of the Center for School Mental Health, led a dynamic discussion that centered on federal resources and initiatives to assist in these efforts. Touching on everything from Medicaid expansion to integrating technology in order to coordinate services, the panelists, including Linda Rosenberg, President & CEO for the National Council for Behavioral Health, Sherry Molock, Associate Professor at George Washington University, and Lisa Rubenstein, Public Health Advisor for SAMHSA, all agreed that educating the public plays a critical role in the pursuit of reform and widespread implementation of accessible mental health treatment services.
Resources & More Information
The full program, list of speakers, and speaker bios are available on the CRISP website.
Mental Health in Schools Act was introduced by Congresswoman Grace Napolitano. The proposal calls for increased mental health treatment for youth and addresses the importance of early detection and treatment, which in turn will help keep healthcare costs low in the long run. This act would bring mental health professionals into schools for on-site care by providing grant funding that would be distributed by SAMHSA as an extension of their Safe Students, Healthy Schools program.
Student Support Act is sponsored by Congresswoman Barbara Lee and enables the Secretary of Education to issue grants of at least $1 million to schools around the country to hire on-site mental health providers. The requirements include one school counselor for every 250 students, one school psychologist for every 1,000 students, and one school social worker for every 250 students.
The Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment program (EPSDT) is a Medicaid program that is mandatory for all states, but voluntary for participants. EPSDT provides periodic screens for behavioral health issues in conjunction with anticipatory guidance for parents and caregivers. While participation is voluntary, treatment is mandatory for any participant who has been identified with any behavioral health risk factor. The goal of the program is to integrate primary health care with behavioral and developmental care and increase treatment access for low-income families.
The National Council for Behavioral Health unifies community mental health and substance use treatment organizations in the United States. The council is committed to improving access and the delivery of comprehensive, high-quality mental health care. The Council has resources and activities ranging from policy action and development to helping providers with program implementation and best practices.
The Center for School Mental Health (CSMH) offers a number of resources and up to date information about implementing strong school mental health services, as well as news related to school mental health. CSMH’s briefs serve as a strong resource for staying up to date on school-focused mental health services.
The National Alliance of Mental Illness’ (NAMI) Children and Adolescent Action Center provides information and links to outside organizations focused on special education and school based mental health. NAMI also provides great resources related to building Individualized Education Programs (IEP) including tips for parents and educators for building and understanding an IEP.
The Institute of Medicine has highlighted the advancements and opportunities in mental health preventative care including the impact of services, financial advantages, and evaluation of value. One report in particular, Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities, was reference throughout the symposium.
Courtesy of McSilver Institute of Poverty Policy and Research who has kindly given SJS permission to syndicate this piece.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the Policy News Briefs are not necessarily the views of the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research or NYU’s Silver School of Social Work. If you have comments or suggestions about this service, contact us at mcsilver@nyu.edu.
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Any treatment for mental illness that involves psychiatric/psychoactive drugs guarantees a worsened outcome. So anyone who keeps suggesting that children should be labelled as early as possible, so that nasty label follows them for life, and then suggests that conventional mental health treatments are going to assist that child is all of a eugenicist, a participant in a crime against humanity and a liar.
All studies show that conventional treatments of the mental illnesses that are nothing more than ‘opinions’ ruin children’s lives permanently. But there is a whole industry built on victimizing children as early as possible…just look at the ‘committees’ and the mega bucks made by the participants when that same money could have helped diminish poverty and neglect in the households of the children reacting normally to poverty and neglect!
When psychiatrists made a normal reaction to poverty, neglect and abuse a flaw in the individual, they sold us the biggest lie in the world and children are paying the price…but people such as these pretentious blow-hards are making big salaries worsening children’s lives.
As long as psychiatry is in charge, normal reactions will be penalized with brain-damaging drugs and lots of horrific every-accummulating diagnoses. And they will always pay people such as there are on these many committees to pretend to address the problem…the victim.
As we are seeing more and more…the children are retaliating with mass murders and total indifference and even hatred for the parents and mental health ‘professionals’ who harmed them repeatedly…first at home, then by committee and drug therapy.
Grace, you are doing this world a huge disservice with such garbage advice and information. Duh, mental illness comes first, then the drugs. Do you even know that 1 in 6 adults has some form of diagnosable mental illness that was caused/created from childhood trauma, abuse, and/or neglect. PERIOD. Mental illness is started and created in your childhood. Mental illness is not only genetic, there must be some form of trauma, abuse, and/or neglect for it to manifest itself. Poor PARENTING is the number one (90%) cause of mental illness! Mental illness and dysfunction is passed on from generation to generation because everyone is taught to “respect your parents” even when the parents don’t deserve any respect. We are all backwards trying to fix things that we ourselves broke. START WITH PARENTING, and you will see change fast.
Why don’t you pause before hitting Add Comment and review your dribble before sending it off. All of the top experts in the world have proven SCIENTIFICALLY that mental illness does not exist and that someone born into poverty is not mentally ill just because they were born poor, abused or otherwise!
You state exactly what I stated as being the real problem and then instead of stopping there, you go on to add that the victim of such horrible environments should also be re-victimized by being labelled for life as ‘flawed’ by some ‘superior authority’ somewhere and then brain-damaged on top of it to profit Big Pharma.
Read Dr. Peter Breggin’s work, visit CCHRint.org and please stop trying to make others look bad who are informed and instead do your research. Then maybe someday someone will respect what you have to say.
Maybe some day you could explain why over ten-thousand newborns are right this moment being drugged with anti-anxiety medication proven to brain-damages an adult..could it be that now being born is a mental illness????
Ask the parent of any child whose kid went through the mental health system and the foster system where 70% of foster children are put on psychiatric drugs just for the crime of having been born into a dysfunctional family. See if their child is doing any better.
It is guaranteed that the current mental health treatments worsen outcomes.
Recently, more often than not, as we see ‘experts’ start to work with vulnerable children caught in hopeless poverty and abusive situations, we learn that more and more psychologists and pedophile-leaning educators are carving a new career for themselves by convincing children as young as 6 and 7 years of age that they may be ‘transgendered’ and therefore a sex change would solve their problems.
As very young children are groomed to focus on their bodies, their gender, their genitilia by school sex educators, just as pedophiles do outside the school, math and science scores are plummeting further every year. This ensures more poverty and entire generations groomed for the porno industry. And when the young adult becomes despondent over their circumstances, bet you’ll call them ‘mentally ill’.
Anyone who advocates blaming the child and ‘fixing’ the child instead of fixing the child’s environment is adding to the crime.
Children use to grow up in poverty and abusive situations all the time and yes they suffered emotionally…but until psychiatrists came into the picture, their brains remained intact and they were able to survive, become productive members of society and raise families. Many went to the great wars, came back, built businesses and communities.
How many who are in treatment or have been in conventional mental health ‘treatment’ can brag of having even survived ‘treatment’ with their brain intact or functioning enough to get a job and raise a family let alone a thriving career?
Not today…more often than not, they are drugged into insanity, become totally disabled and end up sterile and demented, never to hold relationships or jobs.
Please, before you say anything more damaging, get the statistics. The latest study of 17,000 Canadian children drugged for ‘mental illness’ speaks volumes. In every case the situation for the child worsened. Relief for the child of the re-victimization by ‘mental illness treatments’ came only through suicide.
Since the current ‘mental health treatments’ became the norm, the rate of childhood disability, sterility, insanity, suicidality and homicidality has become epidemic…whereas prior it was extremely rare.
Are you serious? Mental illness does not exist? And you need to be the one to shut up your dribble because if you had any type of education or knowledge whatsoever about mental illness or child abuse/neglect, you would know that victims often want and need nothing more than their pain and trauma be acknowledged and something be done about it. Those who want to heal do not consider themselves “labeled” when they stand up against abuse/neglect, and to insinuate that will only silence more victims who need a voice. OMG, the damage that you do to child abuse prevention is astounding. Please shut your mouth. You are way out of line and totally wrong. You are obviously only trying to promote some stupid book because your response was not only ignorant, it was lacking intelligence.
And if people are medicating babies for mental illness, they should have their children removed and put into foster care, which is often times much better than the homes, so don’t blame foster care for bad parenting because when a child is placed in foster care there is a very good reason, and that reason is mentally ill parents who abuse and/or neglect their children.
And DUH, a child is not drugged for being born into a dysfunctional family, are you out of your mind? Children are drugged when abusive and/or neglectful parents bring their child to a doctor after the child acts out in school or gets into some type of trouble. When psychiatrists try to point out parenting errors parents will raise a stink and cry about their rights, even threaten to sue or ruin a psychiatrists reputation. IT IS NEVER THE PARENTS FAULT and that is why doctors drug children who are misbehaving; it is to pacify the bad parents. COme on, this is elementary! The bad behavior predates the medication. DUH! No doctor will medicate a child that isn’t exhibiting any symptoms! Doctors medicate when parents pretend that the reason the child is misbehaving is because the child is just naughty and they hide their own responsibility. What I talk about here is the norm and occurs on a daily basis. Hello? You absolutely have not enough intelligence to make those ridiculous claims. Now please stop harming our cause of preventing child abuse/neglect. You are ruining it for children who desperately need help, not stupidity.
PARENTS are the #1 reason why children are being drugged at epidemic levels. Doctors have no choice but to drug children who are misbehaving or acting out in some way simply because the parents must blame someone and it is always easier to blame the child. Children act out their anxiety and pain, and most of a child’s anxiety and pain is caused from their homelife/environment. Why is everyone so dumb? It is because of our ridiculous inherent ideal that we all have the right to bear children and to raise them how we wish without interference from anyone. It’s pure “parental arrogance” that has gotten us here. There isn’t one stitch of humbleness when it comes to being a parent, they all think that they are perfect even when they are abusive or neglectful. ALL parents think that they do nothing wrong and ALL parents think that they have rights to do things to their children that they should not. Mental illness and dysfunction is passed on because facing and exposing it is impossible to do because of society’s reaction to it and our governments handling of it (courts like to sweep these things under the rug because it’s easier to silence a child than it is an adult.) Pedophiles have way more rights than children do and they easily and knowingly manipulate our entire system every day so that friends, relatives, neighbors, teachers, etc. are all afraid to speak up. I know firsthand what happens to those who try to speak up and expose child abuse. They are also further abused and victimized by their peers and our legal system. We should all be ashamed of ourselves the way that abused and neglected children are ignored every single day. They all grow up with mental health issues because of their very sick and sad environment. Even the smallest parenting mistakes can cause permanent injury, harm, and damage to a child’s psyche for the rest of their lives. Many with mental illness have no idea how where to even start, and most do not even know that they have anything wrong with them. IGNORANCE and selfishness is what is fueling the mental illness epidemic. Everyone would rather do the easy thing and that is to look away and be silent. Everyone would rather believe a pedophile’s story over a child victim’s word because the pedophile has more power and rights to harm. Wake up everyone. Take off the blinders. Stop being so selfish.