Advocate urges mental health care for children
The mass shooting at a South Florida high school this week might have been prevented if the state offered children universal access to mental-health care, allowing problems to be detected and treated early, a prominent mental health advocate says.
“I keep listening to wellCounty meaning people trying to come up with things that should be done. But to me, it’s so clear,” said Candice Crawford, president and CEO of the Mental Health Association of Central Florida. “Let’s say at 6 years old, at 8 years old, at 12 years old, that this young man had absolute access to services through the school, through his parents. He would not have started killing animals, which he bragged about. He would not have developed this obsessive tendency with guns. Because those things would have been dealt with when he was still young enough to do something about them.”
Nikolas Cruz, 19, is suspected of fatally shooting 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day after being expelled for disciplinary problems. Broward Mayor Beam Furr told reporters that Cruz had been treated at a mental-health clinic more than a year ago but had apparently stopped going.
Crawford said that even at 17 or 18, Cruz may have gotten help too late. Researchers have found that long-term mental illness can damage the brain in ways that make it more difficult
to function properly.
According to a MasonDixon telephone poll conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 86 percent of registered voters surveyed said they’re concerned about the lack of mental-health funding in the state, and 81 percent believe the issue should receive a “significant increase” in legislative funding. Florida ranks last in the nation in funding per person for mental-health services.
Options for children are especially scarce.
Melanie Brown-Woofter, president and CEO of the Florida Council for Community Mental Health, an association of nonprofit community mental-health centers, said the problem stems from both limited funding and a lack of providers.
“There is a great need for psychiatrists, especially child psychiatrists, in the state,” she said. “It just seems to be a specialty that isn’t wildly popular at this time. The psychiatrists here are aging out … and there just aren’t an equal number of young physicians coming out of medical school who choose to do a psychiatric residency. We’re not quite sure why.”
But the state has had success in its limited use of mobile teams of other types of mental-health providers that visit youth and families at their homes.
“We need more of those,” Crawford said. “This problem didn’t start today. It didn’t start yesterday. And while 95 percent or more of the people with mental illness will never become violent, we need to address the 3 to 5 percent who do.”