Nearly Half of America’s Youth Have Untreated Mental Illness

[runawaybunny]

It's usually easy for parents to identify their child's physical needs, such as warm clothes when it's cold, nutritious food, and bedtime at a reasonable hour. However, a child's mental and emotional needs aren't always as obvious. In fact, mental disorders severe enough to hinder kids from learning or developing properly are quite common, affecting about one in five of America's youth. These disorders may show up as irritability, nightmares, disobedience, verbal and physical aggression, temper tantrums, hyperactivity and fidgeting, ongoing worry and anxiety, refusal to go to school or poor school performance.

 

[klmno]

Maybe I read this wrong- I liked the article, which seem to indicate that about half of those with mental illness are left unidentified/untreated. But the title makes it sound like nearly half of the youth in our country have a mental illness. I wouldn't agree with that statement because my presumption would be that most of those would fit criteria like ODD and/or ADHD and it's just my opinion that sometimes (not always), kids are diagnosis'd as having these when it really is just sd's and society's expectations are that active kids are supposed to sit still 8 hours a day or act like adults and it's just not going to happen. IOW, if 50% of kids are diagnosis's adhd or ODD, then I think something is wrong with the "norm" being used and the diagnosis'ing criteria.

But, as far as what the article said, unless I missed something, it's about 13% of youth with mental illness and that might be true. Also, I did like the fact that it pointed out many youth are sitting in class with anxiety and/or depression and because they aren't getting into trouble, they are not identified or helped. I think this is a big problem- it was definitely an issue with my son but unfortunately, I was not aware of it until after he did start acting out and breaking the law and I started gettting a lot more aggressive about finding out specifics of what exactly was going on at school.

 

[TerryJ2]

Ohhh, I get it.

This is the actual quote: But tragically, almost half of adolescents who have a mental health disorder go untreated.

HUGE distinction!

I was worried there!
But it is true, of those who have mental health disorders, they do, indeed, often go untreated.