There are hundreds of thousands of children who have benefited from treatment. What we re trying to do now is make sure that children who need to be treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorders are treated and are treated appropriately. Some people just focus on the fact that there are people on treatment who shouldn t be, and that s true, there are some. But it s important to keep in mind that there are people on treatment who are benefiting from it, and if they were not on treatment, would not be able to function. Some of them end up in the juvenile justice system and they never actually get out.
Some people end up homeless.
Some of our studies show that one third to one half of people who are homeless in this country are not homeless because they re poor, they re homeless because of mental illness that s not being treated. Depression lasts for a long period of time, to the point where one is not able to function, one is not eating, not sleeping, and in some cases, one is talking about taking their own life, and you ought to take that very seriously. I met with some teenagers out in Portland, and many talked about how they had lost friends to suicide. I didn t want to rat on them, as they would say. If you have a friend who is talking about not wanting to go on living, then you should talk about it with that person, but then you also ought to talk about it to somebody who can help.