We need help for kids with mental illness

The National Alliance on Mental Illness Ohio, like all of America, is sickened by the evil act that took place yesterday at a school in Broward County, Florida. Our hearts go out to the victims whose lives were cut short and their families. Words are not enough. We must, as a society, find the root causes for these events to happen time and time again and take meaningful action.

We don’t profess to have a solution that would eliminate the chances of this ever happening again, but we do have answers that would lessen the risk factors for acts of violence such as this.

In Ohio, we know there are children who are exhibiting similar disturbing behaviors shown by this young man who are at risk to do harm. There are evil people in this world who do not have a mental illness and there are evil people who do have a mental illness. But there is a difference between behavior caused by the symptoms of mental illness and behavior caused by evil, anti-social people. There are multiple causes but most are rooted in failure to identify and intervene early with appropriate services.

Only 20 percent of children diagnosed with a mental illness receive any care at all. When a child is identified as a potential risk, we do not have the adequate services available to intervene prior to a crisis. We expel these children from school, make sure they don’t bring a backpack, and cross our fingers that this disturbed child doesn’t do anything harmful.

The suspect’s social-media postings and threats to other students show a very disturbed young mind, but we still failed to recognize his potential to do harm of this level. What would have happened if we had recognized and acted on these concerns?

There are few to no children’s residential treatment centers anywhere in this country. Many of the existing centers are costly and therefore unattainable for most families. But even this type of treatment might not have reduced this threat.

And if treatment doesn’t work, how do we balance civil liberties with the need to keep people safe? In Ohio, there are no state-operated psychiatric hospitals for young people that offer a secure environment. There once were three but all were closed in the 1980s.

We must provide traumabased care and access to early identification and intervention in every school in this state. We must integrate mental-health screenings for all children as part of overall health and wellness and establish better supports for families as well as education about mental illness.

A recent report shows 1 in 7 Ohio children face three or more trauma measures known as adverse childhood experiences. Nearly one-third of Ohio’s children face economic hardship. The opioid crisis, which left more than 4,000 Ohioans dead in 2016, leaves parentless children in its wake.

This much trauma is shown to affect brain development and is directly connected to a child’s ability to function in this world. This is no excuse for the accused young man’s actions, but we are concerned about the lack of intervention for so many children who have similar childhood histories and desperately need supports.

Our greatest sadness is the 17 lives lost. We also are saddened that this conversation happens time and time again, after Columbine, Sandy Hook, Kentucky, etc., but no long-term action is taken to address the root causes of this violence.

It is long overdue to focus on the 80 percent of children with mental illness who aren’t receiving any care and the children who are left traumatized after seeing so many of our society’s ills. Ohio’s next step must be to move from conversation to action. Enough is enough.