Monthly Archive for November, 2005

The Economics of Mental Illness

Published
by
Mike Tikkanen
on November 18, 2005
in Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy
. 0 Comments


Mental Health and Children

Speaking at the 2005 MSSWA Annual fall conference, Dr. Sulik from St. Cloud’s Centre Care gave one of the best explanations of mental health that I have ever heard. He also runs one of the most effective programs for saving troubled children in our nation.

These are my observations as I apply Dr. Sulik’s information to the work I do with abused children.

Boys and girls are complex beings living within complicated and demanding social structures.Children unfortunate enough to be born to dysfunctional parents and toxic living conditions develop very differently than children growing up in healthy families (physiologically and mentally).

Each year in America there are about three million children reported as abused and about one million kids enter Child Protection Services.

Emotionally and mentally ill children are poorly equiped to learn in school, play well with others, or respond appropriately in social situations.

Abused and neglected children suffer traumatically from the terrible experiences that led to their removal from their birth home.What we observe to be rage and anger from troubled children are generally anxiety ridden/traumatic responses to current perceived threats and past violence.

Those of us who work with traumatized children are familiar with the pain and suffering just below the surface of most damaged children. We also know that if untreated, damaged children turn into damaged adults, preteen mothers, and dangerously disturbed people.

The economics of treating mental health issues for children is far more effective than letting the problems grow into adulthood, where the evidence clearly indicates a continued social failure and institutional dependence (whether prison, hospital, or state sponsored programs) for those people denied help in their youth.

Today our congress passed a bill cutting fifty billion dollars from programs that could have helped these people…the least among us, to have some of their most basic needs met.

It hurts me to live in a nation so willing to abandon needy children.

Support at risk children, start a KARA group in your community

Have something to add?

Got a different point of view, want to play devil’s advocate, or just think we’re all wet? Post your experiences or examples.   If you think  someone might appreciate this information,  press the share button below..

guardian conference

Published
by
Mike Tikkanen
on November 12, 2005
in Crime and Courts, Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy
. 0 Comments


I met a multitude of hard working guardian ad-Litems at a their annual conference November 8th and 9th.

Presenter Dr. Jeffrey Edleson explained that reported cases of child endangerment almost doubled (from 1500 to 2500 cases monthly) in Minnesota when the language in the law changed to include children exposed to domestic violence as maltreatment.
The increase in cases so overwhelmed the Child Protection System that the changes were dropped within just a few months.

Dr. Edleson points out that some states have found mothers unfit for being victims of violent assaults (because they had exposed their children to domestic violence.)

This brought back a vivid recollection of Joe Rigert’s Minneapolis Star and Tribune article and his well-researched stories of women incarcerated because the man they lived with was a drug dealer. These women were mostly guilty of being in love with or afraid of a man that treated them badly.

Most women drew longer sentences (under federal mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines) than the perpetrator, they lost custody of their children, and in almost all cases, they had not profited from the criminal’s activity. See Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children.

Because federal prisons were generally far from the homes of these women, they were unable to receive visits from their children. There is no doubt, that our legal system is tortured between understanding the need to make people well, and the habit of punishing everyone to the fullest extent of the law (no matter what the consequences).

We could do At Risk Children a big favor and persistently communicate to our lawmakers that we want child friendly legislation, programs that work for children and families, and no more new prisons (especially women’s prisons).

Support At Risk Children, start a KARA group in your community

Have something to add?

Got a different point of view, want to play devil’s advocate, or just think we’re all wet? Post your experiences or examples.   If you think  someone might appreciate this information,  press the share button below..

100 Years of Juvenile Justice

Published
by
Mike Tikkanen
on November 5, 2005
in Crime and Courts, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy
. 0 Comments


At the William Mitchell Law School today, I learned that Minnesota has been a genuine leader in Juvenile Justice in America for one hundred years.

The vast majority of people working with abused and neglected children quickly see the need for healing the mental and emotional scars left on children that have been terribly abused by their parents.

Most thinking people also perceive the benefits to the larger society of making children well and allowing them to become productive members of society (instead of leaving them dysfunctional and to go on to have more dysfunctional progeny).

Healing children through the efforts of the courts is making some people stretch their brain to accommodate something other than an adversarial approach to a Justice System.

Today at the William Mitchell Law Schools Conference on Innovations Ideas in Juvenile Law I observed the incongruity of bright committed people arguing opposite ends of the spectrum.

This would be just an interesting curiosity if it did not so glaringly exemplify the difference between healing emotionally and mentally disturbed children and imprisoning kids whose entire lives have been a punishment.

I call it our abandonment of twice-abused children. Once by their parents, and once by our Justice System.

Instead of assessing their mental status, we send them to jails and boot camps, to reinforce how different they are from we good people and why they must live apart from us.

I’m won’t recite the mental illness statistics within the Juvenile or Criminal Justice Systems (way over half), but I will draw your attention to the fact that most of the children in Minnesota’s Juvenile Justice System have come out of Child Protection system and most of the adults in Criminal Justice have come out of Juvenile Justice.

Inevitably, these children go on to spend many years in our institutions.

They hate it, we hate it, and great expense and suffering is incurred along the way as it happens.

Some very smart people at the Symposium suggested that we just quit doing counterproductive things and do things that work. There are so many successful models.

We’ll save big money and many lives and we’ll feel much better about ourselves.

Thank you William Mitchell for your Symposium celebrating 100 years of Juvenile Courts in Minnesota. This was a much needed public dialogue.

It is efforts like yours that will spread the word and make people see the wisdom of better public policy towards children.