Thorough assessment of mental disorders takes time and diagnostic acumen, in part because symptoms of various disorders can overlap. Some agitated children diagnosed with ADHD and treated with a stimulant actually have bipolar mood disorder, which requires a mood stabilizer. Another common error is diagnosing unipolar depression when the child really has a bipolar disorder, involving both manic and depressive episodes. If antidepressants alone are prescribed, they can precipitate a manic episode. Cost, both in terms of money and time, also deters proper identification and treatment of these children.
Many poor children have either no health care or inadequate health care.
These same children are often in schools that are so overwhelmed with problems that they can hardly educate children, much less identify and remedy mental disorders. Lack of health insurance and cost-cutting policies of managed care companies also mean some children do not get the treatment they need. There are severe consequences for failing to treat children adequately. Prisons are full of poor, learning disabled young men who had ADHD that crossed the line into oppositional defiant disorder. Suicide is a problem reaching epidemic proportions, seen now in children as young as grade school and with increasing numbers in middle school, high school and college, especially among boys.