Democratic Senator Touts Bill To Allow Patients Involuntarily Committed For Mental Illness To Purchase Guns

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) hinted on Tuesday that he would oppose a Democratic initiative to expand background checks to all gun purchases, but reiterated his support for an NRA-backed measure that would permit individuals deemed mentally ill or incompetent to purchase firearms more freely. Pryor is part of small group of Democrats in red states who have not endorsed universal background checks, even though the measure is supported by a majority of residents.

“You know, I’m a Second Amendment guy, everybody knows that. People in our state are very strong believers in the Second Amendment and the right to gun ownership,” Pryor told “The Alice Stewart Show,” which airs on KHTE 96.5 The Voice. The conservative Democrat then highlighted his co-sponsorship of an NRA concocted proposal that would reduce the number of records in the existing background check system by removing prohibitions against individuals who were involuntarily committed to mental institutions.

Pryor emphasized removing records from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, rather than broadening the requirement:

PRYOR: I do support improving the background check. I want to make sure that when we put data in the background check that we have the right kind of mental health data. We need integrity in that data to be in there and we also need a process where people can get their names out of there when the time is right. Either they got their name wrongly in the first place or they’ve gone through some issue or whatever and that’s behind them and they need to get their name out of the database. So I support a bipartisan bill on that, in fact I think it’s endorsed by the NRA, so I’m not like totally opposed to every single thing. I try to be reasonable on this.

Pryor, along with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mark Begich (R-AK), Dean Heller (R-NV), and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), has introduced the NICS Reporting Improvement Act (S. 480). The Act clarifies that mentally ill people are prevented from obtaining firearms but defines that term narrowly, so as to allow patients who had been treated for mental illness to pass a federal background check and purchase guns.

For instance, federal law prohibits people who are ordered by a court into involuntary treatment, found to pose a danger to themselves or others, or lack the mental capacity to enter into legal contracts from buying weapons — even though individuals can petition to have their rights restored in 22 states. The bipartisan NICS Reporting Improvement Act would allow these people to purchase weapons immediately after being released, unless it can be proven that they pose an “imminent” danger.

Since the shooting at Virginia Tech, the number of mental health records in NICS has grown from 200,000 to 1.2 million, though “millions of records identifying seriously mentally ill people and drug abusers as prohibited purchasers are missing from the federal background check database because of lax reporting by state agencies,” a report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns found. Pryor’s bill would keep even more mentally ill individuals out of the system.

“I doen’t listen to [New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg] on these issues, I listen to Arkansas,” Pryor said. A recent poll found that 84 percent of Arkansans support expanding background checks to all firearm purchsases.

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How Facebook Could Actually Be Good For Your Mental Health

Go ahead — check those notifications. According to a new pilot study conducted by Dr. Alice Good of the University of Portsmouth, the vast majority of Facebook users use the social network to lift their spirits when they’re feeling down by navigating their old photos and wall posts in which they’ve interacted with family and friends — a “self-soothing” coping mechanism somewhat akin to flipping through a photo album or watching old home videos.

Researchers argue that that could be a big boost for users who are prone to anxiety or depression by providing a healthy emotional conduit for reminiscing about the good times in one’s life. The findings also shed new light into what, exactly, users are looking to achieve when they use social media to share their feelings and experiences:

Psychologist Dr Clare Wilson, also of the University of Portsmouth, said: “Although this is a pilot study, these findings are fascinating.

“Facebook is marketed as a means of communicating with others. Yet this research shows we are more likely to use it to connect with our past selves, perhaps when our present selves need reassuring.

“The pictures we often post are reminders of a positive past event. When in the grip of a negative mood, it is too easy to forget how good we often feel. Our positive posts can remind us of this.”

Dr Good’s study has concluded that looking at comforting photos, known as reminiscent therapy, could be an effective method of treating mental health. [...]

The act of self-soothing is an essential tool in helping people to calm down, especially if they have an existing mental health condition.

The findings are particularly interesting given past studies that have indicated that Facebook users end up feeling depressed after a browsing session. For instance, one German study found that “one in three people felt worse after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives, while people who browsed without contributing were affected the most.”

But those findings derived from users’ envy at their friends’ vacations, life milestones, and various successes. The new preliminary data from Dr. Good’s study suggests that, used in a different way — i.e., actively “self-soothing” rather than passively sulking — browsing through one’s Facebook history could be a net benefit. And that could be very good news from a global mental health perspective for the social network, which has over a billion users worldwide and counting.

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Military Leaders: Sequester Cuts Will Prevent Veterans From Accessing Mental Health Services

During a hearing before the House Military Personnel Subcommittee Wednesday, American civilian and military leaders issued lawmakers a stark warning: federal budget cutbacks under the so-called “sequester” will leave veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other mental illnesses without access to the health care that they desperately need.

The sequester cuts will force multiple governmental departments to cut back on programs or eliminate them entirely. Charged with taking care of the staggering percentage of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans with PTSD, the Defense Department has had to increasingly rely on civilian mental health specialists to address the backlog. In fact, out of the 2,118 psychologists, 809 psychiatrists, and 2,533 social workers now employed by the military — a substantial increase over past years — over half are civilians. But under sequestration, the Department has been bracing for massive cuts to this civilian workforce, and is preparing to send notices to “more than 800,000 Defense Department civilian workers telling them that once-a-week unpaid furloughs will begin in April and continue for 22 weeks.”

As Military.com reports, that is particularly problematic for the military when it comes to these civilian mental health specialists because “they have options to seek employment elsewhere” and might be tempted to do so seeing as they are not exempt from the furloughs:

Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the Army’s surgeon general, has lobbied to exempt the mental health specialists from furloughs to retain them for treating PTSD. The Pentagon has said that 20 percent of the civilian workforce will be exempt from furloughs. However, it did not look like the mental health specialists would receive that exemption, said Col. Rebecca Porter, the chief of Behavioral Health in Horoho’s office.

“We value these individuals greatly,” Porter said of the mental health workers. “If they start to go out the door, it’s going to take a lot longer for us to rebuild that” mental health workforce, Porter told a defense writers breakfast Tuesday.

“We have in the past offered retention bonuses, but that’s not specifically on the table now,” said Porter, a former military police officer and now a clinical psychologist whose main task is treating PTSD in the Army.

Her comments echoed those of Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, who told a Senate hearing last month that “before sequestration, we allocated the dollars and positions to increase military and civilian mental health providers.”

“The problem is there are not enough out there,” Odierno said. “Now what’s going to happen is we’re going to have to reduce the number we already have.”

The officials’ testimony is a clear-cut demonstration of the real world consequences brought on by budget cuts that lawmakers and the media tend to discuss in rather shallow terms. Budget cuts to military health care programs are also particularly cruel considering the already-massive backlog of over 900,000 veterans’ benefit claims — a problem that will be exacerbated as more military personnel return home from the waning Afghan war. Those veterans will already be plagued by poverty and a bleak economic outlook when they return home — and under sequestration, their mental health care outlook is even worse.

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ADHD’s Lasting Effects Prove That Mental Disorders Need To Be Treated Just Like Any Other Illness

When the bipartisan Wellstone-Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) was signed into law in 2008, mental health advocates hoped it would begin bridging the gap between the way that mental health treatments and more “traditional” medical services are provided — particularly by prohibiting different standards for one type of care over the other. Unfortunately, the evidence shows there’s still a long way to go when it comes to making the dream of medical parity a reality.

Time’s new Mayo clinic-sponsored report points out that ADHD, while being increasingly diagnosed and treated in children, has lingering long-term effects on adults and is a strong indicator of co-occurring mental illnesses for both children and adults. But lax insurance requirements, as well as a lack of awareness about the long-term effects of mental illness, have led to a dearth of research regarding the comprehensive effects of what medical professionals tend to dismiss as a childhood behavioral disorder:

It’s not that the condition isn’t being addressed adequately, or that doctors, parents and teachers are not aware of the condition: they certainly are, since education and awareness about ADHD has increased in recent decades, even contributing to a rise in diagnoses… [Dr. Barbaresi of Boston Children’s Hospital and Mayo Clinic] argues, however, that the legacy and long term implications of an ADHD diagnosis haven’t really been considered and studied adequately, since most doctors tend to think of the condition as one that primarily affects children that they tend to outgrow once they reach adulthood. The need for attention is even greater considering that the study also found a connection between ADHD and suicide. While the absolute number of deaths in the adults who still have ADHD is low, the statistical difference is significant: children with ADHD were nearly five times more likely to die from suicide than other people in the study group. [...]

In addition, data from this same group of study participants showed that more than 60% of kids with ADHD have a learning disability and develop at least one additional mental-health problem while they’re still children. Yet insurance companies are reluctant to authorize additional assessments that may detect and treat these conditions. “If a child gets diagnosed with ADHD, we want to do a comprehensive psychological assessment to see if the child has undiagnosed disorders because we know these kids are at risk,” says Barbaresi. “But insurance won’t pay.”

That’s in stark contrast to the way that children are evaluated for other medical conditions, such as diabetes. “We know they’re at risk for developing kidney and eye problems so they’re regularly assessed for those issues. We don’t wait until a child has renal failure or loses his eyesight,” says Barbaresi. “But with childhood ADHD, we can’t get authorization to do these assessments until it’s already happened.”

The Mayo study on ADHD underscores the practical hurdles of enacting true parity between the ways that mental health disorders and more “traditional” medical problems are diagnosed, treated, and even researched. Societal stigmas and decades of traditional medical practice have perpetuated a system in which mental health disorders are considered to be unique, individualistic medical problems — they are not — that ignores the interplay that mental disorders have with other medical conditions, not to mention the physical manifestations of such disorders.

Much of the focus on changing this unacceptable status quo has — justifiably — concentrated on funding and access to mental health care services. For instance, between the Wellstone-Domenici law and Obamacare’s requirement that statewide insurers include mental health coverage as an “essential health benefit,” millions of Americans are expected to gain access to mental services:

That is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. But the mental health benefits that states must provide under Obamacare are left largely to states’ discretion — and there is little reason to expect that states will impose strict requirements on insurers since mental health is still largely considered a form of “specialty” care culturally, if not legally, and private insurance doesn’t tend to cover patients’ out-of-pocket psychiatric costs. Bringing true parity between mental and physical health care necessitates a paradigm shift in the very culture of how such conditions are analyzed, approached, and treated, in addition to stricter insurer requirements for providing comprehensive care.

Armed with more data from longitudinal studies about the long-term effects and complex interactions of mental health problems — such as the Mayo ADHD study — health care professionals could substantially improve the lives of millions of Americans, and help eliminate a dangerous medical inequality and stigma in the process.

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Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill To Strengthen America’s Mental Health System

As part of a wide-ranging effort to address gun violence in the wake of December’s mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, a bipartisan group of senators has introduced the Excellence In Mental Health Act, legislation that aims to strengthen America’s mental health safety net by providing behavioral health care facilities more access to federal funding and consolidating disparate elements of the U.S. mental health safety net.

When introducing the legislation, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) explained, “[W]e must work together to spend federal dollars more wisely when treating people who are mentally ill. This bill will help address our fragmented mental health system and ensure that more patients have access to the care they need by offering current Community Mental Health Centers a chance to expand their services and obtain the Federally Qualified Community Behavioral Health Center designation.” Such a move would provide qualifying behavioral health centers parity with physical health centers by giving them access to prospective — rather than retrospective — Medicaid reimbursements. Modern Healthcare reports that the legislation would also require the federal health centers to offer more expansive services to mentally ill Americans and their families:

The new criteria established by the bill… would require such things as 24-hour crisis care, the increased integration of mental and substance abuse care with other kinds of medical care, as well as expanded support for families of mental health patients.

Mark Covall, president and CEO of the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems, said increased standardization and integration are both worthwhile goals (though the association doesn’t take an official stand on the bill). Whether it is adding mental health services to federally qualified health centers or adding medical care to mental health centers, integration is important because that is the direction the industry is moving toward, Covall said.

In its current iteration, the Excellence In Mental Health Act represents a solid step in the right direction when it comes to bridging the illogical gap between the ways that physical and behavioral health issues are treated in America. But while the increased funding provisions are good news, the bill still does not go quite as far as the Wellstone-Domenici Mental Health Parity And Addiction Equity Act, which would require most private insurers to treat mental health coverage the same way they treat any other coverage.

It is also encouraging that the bill includes mental health resources for veterans and substance abusers. Military suicides reached a record high in January, and substance abusers — as a group — are among the most likely to suffer from a co-occurring mental illness. Alongside Sen. Al Franken’s (R-MN) recently-introduced Mental Health In Schools Act — which encourages early intervention and community resources for mentally ill American children — the new legislation suggests that the Senate is serious about plugging the gaping holes in America’s mental health safety net.

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Georgia May Allow Mental Health Counselors To ‘Involuntarily Commit’ Patients

A Georgia Senate health committee has unanimously passed a bill “that would allow licensed professional counselors to involuntarily commit to an institution for 72 hours patients who appear to be mentally ill and a danger,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

While doctors and psychologists in Georgia already possess the authority to involuntarily commit mentally ill patients they deem to be a “danger,” licensed counselors do not share that power. The bill — SB 65 — looks to change that, with supporters arguing that the additional authorities will ease the burden on Georgia’s mental health institutions:

Giving licensed professional counselors the authority to involuntarily commit patients would fill a need and ease the strain on Georgia’s mental health system, promoters of SB 65 testified Tuesday. Georgia has roughly 4,800 licensed professional counselors.

“We need more investment in our mental health services,” Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, told members of the Senate Health and Human Service Committee. “This is one piece of the puzzle.”

The bill is under discussion at a time when Georgia is struggling to provide more community-based mental health services, including mobile crisis teams, as part of a 2010 agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that stemmed from an investigation into the abuse and death of patients in state mental hospitals.

The history of mental health institutionalization in America is fraught with controversy, but advocates for the mentally ill generally agree that community-based mental health services are medically preferable — and more humane — than institutionalized services. The fact that SB 65 was spurred by Georgia’s dearth of community-based practices suggests that the bill is simply treating a symptom of Georgia’s mental health woes, rather than addressing the issue’s root cause — namely, that the state does’t have nearly enough funding allocated for its mental health care system.

While the temporary institutionalization of mentally ill Americans who might be a danger to themselves or others is a relatively uncontroversial status quo, such laws may add to existing stigmas about mental health care and dissuade Americans with violent thoughts from seeking the care they need. For example, New York’s sweeping new gun safety law was met with reticence by mental health professionals for what some perceived to be draconian provisions requiring care providers to “report” potentially violent patients to a state board.

But Georgia’s law goes even further than that, adding institutionalization to the powers that a doctor has over patients. That’s pretty significant for the over half a million Georgians suffering from a severe mental disorder, as studies have shown that over a third of the mentally ill do not seek care due to social stigmas and the fear of being committed.

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Bradley Cooper On What ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ Can Teach Us About Mental Illness

David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, nominated for eight Oscars, is hardly the first movie to find critical acclaim with a searing portrait of the impact of mental illness. But unlike many films, which portray people who suffer from mental health issues as either saintly or pitiable, Silver Linings Playbook, about Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a former high school teacher who is returning home from eight months at a mental hospital after he beat his wife’s lover and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, is savagely funny and often disarmingly sweet. It’s also a subtle vehicle for larger ideas about mental health care in America, ranging from the damage done by late-in-life diagnoses of mental illnesses, to the fact that for some people, treatment comes only after they come into contact with the criminal justice system, to training about mental health that could help everyone from teachers to cops do their jobs better.

I spoke with Bradley Cooper, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, the president of Give An Hour, which coordinates with volunteer mental health providers to get free treatment to American veterans, about the stigma around mental illness, the intersection of mental health care and law enforcement, and what kinds of conversations they hope Silver Linings Playbook can start. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length:

I wanted to ask you about the structural story of the movie, because the real tragedy of Silver Linings Playbook is that Pat’s biploar disorder doesn’t get diagnosed until it’s completely unmanageable. It’s awful that it gets to this point, but it’s also a way that he finally gets care, and that’s not a story we see very often.

Cooper: But reflective of what’s happening. I mean, that’s the whole point. Patrick Kennedy, he likens it to a diagnosis which happens at stage four of cancer. When that’s occurring, it’s a bleak horizon. The whole idea is to have it be diagnosed before he makes a plea bargain with the courts after he beat the hell out of a guy. That’s the only reason he even went to a hospital in the first place and was diagnosed there. But, if somebody recognized, or he had a venue when he was a teenager, to talk about the fact that his brain is working in such a way that make him feel like an outsider, like he’s not belonging, then maybe that would have been prevented, then maybe he wouldn’t have had to serve time and had a 500-yard restraining order out against him, and have no job.

At the same time, the movie treats the ongoing law enforcement involvement in Pat’s life—a local police officer is assigned to check up on him and respond to calls about him—as a good thing in Pat’s life. He doesn’t have a case worker, he has his therapist appointment once or twice a week, but the cops are actually doing a fairly good job of dealing with him.

Van Dahlen: That’s an unusual situation. The issue is having people in someone’s life who are consistent, who care. The police officer in this story was somebody who actually was willing to try when he could to be helpful, rather than just “Okay, I’m taking you back in.” And unfortunately, that’s not often the case in communities, nor is it the case that we’ve got teacher who have the knowledge, even though they care about the kids, they may not understand. So they’re not going to be the one that says “Maybe something else is going on here.” It’s educating all the way down the line in our communities so these folks are identified and have access and it’s part of our normal conversation. It should not be the case that someone has to keep feeling like “I’m going to try to keep it together, I’m going to try to keep it together.” We see this obviously with the service members, that whole culture, trying to keep it together when they can’t. Our society, unfortunately, puts a tremendous amount of pressure on people, and sometimes, they blow.

Cooper: The police officer for our story in the movie, he serves the same way that his friend Ronnie serves, his brother Jake and his parents, who say “You look great. Just adhere to the rules and you’ll be fine.” There’s no investigation into what’s going on. The cop doesn’t pull him aside at the movie theater and say “Explain to me what happens.” He goes “The restraining order. You want to go back to Baltimore?” Those aren’t ways of actually understanding the situation. And that’s the device we use in the movie to then introduce Tiffany Maxwell, who is Jennifer [Lawrence], and that’s the whole idea of somebody understanding him. And that’s where we can then use this movie in terms of spreading an awareness of people actually needing to investigate, and to inquire in what’s going on, so people feel free to share, instead of adhering to a set of rules, and that’s the way it is.

Van Dahlen: That’s a great point. It does a great job of showing, especially with young people, having both of those elements, the structure, like the psychiatrist said, “You’re going to have to figure this out.” That is a reality. We went through a phase in the mental health community where people got into navel-gazing, and it was all about understanding, and we do need to help people—

Cooper: A strategy. As he says in the diner.

Van Dahlen: Gotta have a strategy, gotta have a structure. And with that, have that understanding, so people can take that within that structure and have a healthy life.

I was struck by that element of the movie. Trying to find small victories, the silver linings, the idea that we can build up one step at a time has always seemed really important. It seems like Pat’s parents, not knowing very much about mental illness, don’t seem to understand that there’s a space in between him being in a mental hospital and him being completely well that is a good target for Pat to get to.

Van Dahlen: The other thing, too, and this happens to veterans, civilians, if you have something, as if we all don’t have something, is if you have something that becomes identified, bipolar, depression, everyone lumps all of your behavior into that. We’ll sit and talk to these veterans, and they’ll say “I got angry, and that’s my PTSD.” And I’ll say, “No, wait a second, it sounds to me like you had reasons to be angry.” And we have to do a better job with that element, too.

When it comes to the stigma around mental illness, I was struck by the intergenerational tension in the movie is interesting. It seems like Pat, Sr. has fairly serious undiagnosed issues, whether it’s OCD, he has the same kinds of tantrums that Pat has.

Cooper: He’s been banned from Vets Stadium.

Van Dahlen: It’s a pretty big tantrum.

It seems like a story about how we can brand getting treatment. The pills aren’t just going to turn you off. It can give you access to things that make you happy again.

Cooper: And also that it’s not the other. This is a regular guy. This is a sort of slice of life, looking at these people who are in the prime of their life. He’s a young guy, and this is what happened to him. You look at his neighbor, John Oritz, is talking about how he goes into his basement and smashes his fists against the wall to Metallica. He’s supposed to be the normal one. So it is sort of an attempt to show, let’s just not just judge, let’s look into ourselves.

Van Dahlen: Life events, if life delivered him a serious blow. It’s what happens to you that determines what others are going to call your behavior.

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STUDY: Americans Just Can’t Afford Mental Health Treatment

The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) has just released its annual report on drug use and mental health disorders in America, and its findings confirm: Americans cannot afford the cost of their mental health treatment — even if they have insurance.

The report estimates that 45.6 million American adults suffered from Any Mental Illness (AMI) in 2011, comprising 19.6 percent of the adult population. Of that 45.6 million, a meager 38.2 percent received any sort of mental health services — and this graph breaks down why:

While 15 percent of Americans suffering from AMI cited inadequate insurance coverage as their main obstacle to seeking care, a staggering 50 percent said that mental treatment costs are simply too high. And that number includes both insured and uninsured Americans, illustrating how expensive out-of-pocket costs for mental health care are relative to the available coverage.

The data also highlights the damage done by the cultural stigma associated with such care. Over 37 percent of Americans who should have received treatment didn’t believe that they needed any or that treatment wouldn’t help — a dangerous assumption that is likely to exacerbate mental illness — and an additional 35 percent were afraid of negative social consequences or being institutionalized.

That last statistic should weigh heavily on lawmakers’ minds as they craft comprehensive gun safety legislation that also addresses mental health services. Mental health professionals have already expressed concerns that New York’s sweeping new gun laws may end up reinforcing stigmas about mental health care and dissuade Americans from seeking the care they need.

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The Kids Are Not All Right: Senate Hearing Highlights Children’s Mental Health Coverage Gaps

During a wide-ranging hearing on the status of America’s mental health system before a Senate health committee on Thursday, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) Franken declared his intention to introduce the Mental Health In Schools Act to address issues of mental illnesses among America’s youth. Thursday’s event was the first Senate hearing on mental health care in six years, as the U.S. is currently engaged in a renewed national conversation on gun safety and mental health issues after last month’s tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Franken explained that his legislation would “allow schools to collaborate with mental health providers, law enforcement, and other community-based organizations to provide expanded access to mental health care for their students” and “support schools in training staff and volunteers to spot warning signs in kids and to refer them to the appropriate services.”

While emphasizing that he didn’t want to inaccurately stigmatize most Americans with mental illnesses as being predisposed to violence, the senator questioned the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel, about the correlation between untreated mental problems in American youth and subsequent violent behavior:

FRANKEN: If mental health issues go untreated, does that increase the chance that someone within a subset, a certain subset of a type of mental illness, will become more violent, Dr. Insel, or will be higher chance that they might become violent?

INSEL: So, Sen. Franken, within that narrow band of the people we’re talking about — which is a small, small segment of the population of people with a mental illness — but those, for instance, who have what we call ‘first episode psychosis’ — we know that the duration of untreated psychosis is related, in fact, to the risk for having a violent act. That’s been studied quite carefully and there’s a real correlation there, so closing that gap is one of the things we can do to increase safety.

FRANKEN: So since, in a sense since Newtown did prompt this, in that very narrow — and that was one of a number of horrific occurrences where I think that no one would question that in Tucson, in Newtown, that we’re talking about someone who’s deranged — that had that person been diagnosed, say, in school and had been able to get some kind of treatment, that there is some kind of connection between making sure that we’re identifying and treating children early on with the tragedy that brought us here?

INSEL: …The published data are quite clear. The difference between severely violent acts like homicide between those who are untreated and those who are treated is fifteen fold. So you drop the risk fifteen fold with treatment. So it’s vital – it’s absolutely vital – that we detect earlier and intervene earlier with something that’s effective.

While the public education system serves as American children’s primary resource for accessing mental health care, only one in five American children in need of treatment actually receives it. This is particularly problematic considering that half of all lifetime mental disorder cases set in by the age of 14.

But if the last several weeks are any indication, lawmakers seem to have woken up to the fact that the current trend is unsustainable. Franken’s proposal for expanding the public school system’s mental health safety net would work in conjunction with President Obama’s Project AWARE initiative to provide similar support and training to schools and other community-based organizations.

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