Building the future...

As a former child of a mentally ill Mom, I have a somewhat unique perspective on mental illness.  But as I have said before in previous posts, I am not the only child with this experience. Many children experience unstable environments as they grow up.  Some deal with poverty.  Some live with a mentally ill or substance abusing parent.  Some live in environments that are abusive or simply bad.  The results for children can include mood disorders, and other types of mental illnesses.  Children frequently struggle.  When I was a child, the system wasn’t quite sure what to do with me.  Social workers intervened, but I don’t remember any intervention including the situation at home as a topic for conversation.  They attempted to work on my problems, not the environment in which those problems developed.  Now, I understand that my memories of that time may not be particularly accurate.  But I can tell you that I don’t remember anyone ever attempting to work with me regarding coping with my extraordinarily unstable Mom and home life.  And that is precisely what I needed.  I needed to talk about what was happening at home.  Talking about what I wasn’t doing at school didn’t help.  Neither did discussing why I had poor relationships with my peers.

So, here is what I believe.  There is a need for collaboration between agencies to meet the mental health care needs of children.  Such collaboration can create a sense of hope for families.  I think intervention in a holistic and supportive way can make a difference for children struggling.  And can make a difference between survival and whether children experience life-long serious ongoing mental health issues.  I recognize that having these early experiences in childhood may lead to chronic mental health problems for a child when they reach adulthood.  The second point is that such mental health issues may interfere with development and future functioning.  We have to treat our children.  Or we are truly throwing lives away.  As we have learned, the costs of not making services available may include violence. And the fact that mental illness can make a person incapable of living productively resulting in increased social services costs. 

The solution is to provide a range of services to reach out to children and families.  Making sure that children don’t fall into the gaps in services is 'job one' in my opinion.  When children are left to flounder, they are prone to develop the mental health issues that will keep them sick and at the mercy of their family dysfunction.  It is time to develop a safety net to encourage families to ask for help.  It is time to identify children at risk.  I applaud the efforts that many communities are making to make this work a priority.  And I challenge the communities that are not doing this difficult work to get on track.  It’s time to make changes.  Creating options for youth will make such a difference in dealing with the mental health challenges that this society faces.  It’s time that we deal with the numbers.  Our society can’t continue to pretend that there is no cost to ignoring mental illness for much longer.

Our concern for children should extend beyond the issue of abortion.  When we aren't concerned about the physical and mental health of youth, it is clear that we are ignoring our shared responsibility to create a stronger and healthier society.  After all, we are the only ones able to do that.  What do you think?