Note to Mentally Ill Teens: You’re On Your Own

[HereSince1628]

http://science.time.com/2013/11/20/note-to-mentally-ill-teens-youre-on-your-own/

The investigators looked for a broad range of conditions common among kids, including mood disorders, behavioral disorders and anxiety disorders. They found plenty of cases of them—but treatment was another matter. According to Kessler’s and Costello’s analysis, a teenager suffering from one psychological disorder has just a 32% chance of having received any treatment at all in the past year. For two disorders, the figure climbs to 44% and only for three or more does it cross the 50-50 mark, topping out at 69%.



“The sicker the kids are, the likelier they are to have gotten treatment,” says Costello. But even then, was it the right kind? For the purposes of the study, “treatment” could mean as little as a single visit, and that visit didn’t even have to be with a psychologist or psychiatrist. School guidance counselors, social services case managers and even representatives of the juvenile justice system could count too.

“The proportion who actually saw a mental health professional was much lower,” says Costello, “at just 12.5% for one disorder, 20.6% for two, and 42.7% for three.”

If not all kids are treated equally, not all disorders are either. The conditions most likely to get the attention of some kind of caregiver were ADHD, oppositional-defiant disorder and any of the conduct disorders—precisely the problems which, coincidentally or not, were the likeliest to cause parents and teachers headaches. In 70% of cases, kids with those conditions got at least some kind of care. Other ills, such as panic disorders, social phobias and more-generalized anxiety disorders, from which kids often suffer silently, received less attention, with only 41.4% of kids seeing any kind of professional and only 22.3% seeing a psychiatrist or psychologist. For major depressive disorder, the numbers were a little better—62% for any care at all and 37% for a mental health professional.


Read more: Teenage, Mentally Ill, and On their Own | TIME.com http://science.time.com/2013/11/20/note-to-mentally-ill-teens-youre-on-your-own/#ixzz2laQE15mO

[Tobin S.]

1. Those are some sad statistics.

And I think they are indicative of an overall trend in our society or a cultural norm (we talked about those recently, eh?), a tendency, to sweep mental health problems under the rug.

Another reason for those dismal numbers might be that mental illnesses are so misunderstood in our society that people simply don't recognize when an individual is mentally ill and get the afflicted person into treatment. People seem to think that the definition of mental illness is walking down the street with a tin foil hat on and speaking to beings that don't really exist. It's usually not that apparent.

So I think the stigma of being labeled with a mental illness along with ignorance about most mental illnesses and an inability to recognize them cause all those young people, and older people as well, to sort of fly under the radar until something tragic happens. If we lived in a society that was more enlightened on the subject and more accepting of people who are mentally ill, we could save a lot of people a lot of heartache.

[HereSince1628]

2. Yes, all probably true

I suspect much is allowed to go untreated blaming problems on being teen-aged

Then years of hanging on more or less until some event brings on a major failure to compensate

[hunter]

3. Through high school and college mental illness was something I was supposed to hide.

I quit high school before the GED existed. (My sister escaped high school by GED. Oddly, the two of us are the only siblings with university degrees.)

High school administrators signed off that I was ready for college. They wanted to get rid of me. I had high SAT scores and college administrators accepted me. Being a minor in college was weird, but much better than the violence I'd experienced in middle and high school. Adults don't beat kids. If they do they go to jail.

I was "asked" to leave college twice under threat of permanent expulsion. Nobody wanted to "ruin" my life. At my very worst I was mostly harmless. I had friendly relationships with the campus and local police, my personal crazy was a nice break from the sordid stuff they usually had to deal with at two a.m. in the morning. I was fine entertainment for the 24-7 donut coffee house break.

The cops would drive me home, sometimes irritating my house-mates by pounding on the door, waking them up and asking if the knew me.

This is why I'm not on Facebook.