But with kids you don't have time. He seeks better training for teachers, school counselors and especially pediatricians, who are best positioned to diagnose emotional disorders. This should not be too costly, Satcher says, because society is already paying for lack of treatment with higher dropout rates, increased medical bills, and crime. But fixing the system won't be simple, not the least because there is no coherent mental-health care system. Instead, services are scattered among schools, county and state health departments, and family physicians.
Schools generally do a lousy job of identifying troubled kids.
On average the children got proper services only at age 10. Indeed, the biggest provider of mental-health services to children may well be the juvenile justice system. In a Chicago study, three quarters of the girls in juvenile detention and two thirds of the boys had one or more psychiatric disorders. Greg Whittaker has struggled to keep his son out of detention, even after the boy stole and wrecked his father's pickup last summer, but he doesn't know how much longer he'll succeed. It'll be tough.