Aug 20, 2018, Bangor (ME) Daily News: Jail shouldn’t be only option for youth with behavioral health needs https://bangordailynews.com/2018/08/20/opinion/editorials/jail-shouldnt-be-only-option-for-youth-with-behavioral-health-needs/
Maine’s top court was considering whether a 17-year-old with a pattern of behavior that “clearly portends future crime” should be sentenced to Long Creek Youth Development Center, the state’s youth prison, until his 18th birthday.
His initial offense was taking a scooter he knew to be stolen and damaging it by painting the number 420 on it. But before those charges had been resolved, he had already committed new crimes — destroying property at a local school….
Virtually all of those options noted by Saufley have diminished in recent years. The reality that there are few viable options for helping out a young person with clear behavioral health needs is a symbol of what has happened to a state system of behavioral health services that saw substantial investment in the late 1990s and early 2000s, only to be essentially neglected since.
Funding for a whole range of children’s behavioral health services has remained stagnant for years. In 2015, the LePage administration proposed cuts so it could use the savings on services for disabled and elderly Mainers. Later, when lawmakers ordered the administration to commission a study to determine what the state should be paying for such services, the consultant the administration hired suggested reductions for a number of key services.
With reimbursement rates largely stagnant over the past decade, providing in-home behavioral health treatment for children as well as more intensive services has become less and less viable for behavioral health agencies. …
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
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What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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