Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013 | 2 a.m.
My son Tim has a serious mental illness. Whenever a tragedy highlights the need for better mental health services, I wonder if policy leaders will finally enact some of the measures that would most make a difference for Tim. And for children who today are experiencing what he did years ago. I’m usually disappointed. Tim has had a bad outcome. He is homeless. It could be worse; he is still alive. Many are not. Bad outcomes are the result of a chain of neglect of mental illness that lengthens over decades. We are not, however, helpless in the face of ...
Paul Gionfriddo lives in Florida and writes the blog Our Health Policy Matters. He wrote this for the Hartford Courant.
This is a subject, a crisis, in our American healthcare and educational system that few ever want to be associated with, let alone talk about it. Yet, mental illness continues to not only pervade in our society, but it continues to grow virtually unchecked.
As a citizen, parent, and educator, I have witnessed our American policymakers do little but CUT funding, over the past decades of my life. As an educator, I have seen children who needed care never receive it, and go on into their lives, bumped and buised about, never realizing their full potential, nor a very happy life.
Our government needs to address this adject failure of a mental health care system, which includes childhood screening, monitoring, and treatment. Our society is only as strong as our weakest link in it.
Blessings and Peace,
Star