A Little M3nT/\L or Mental?

There is no such "condition" as "schizophrenia," but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event. - R. D. Laing 

  Grits for Breakfast offers up a nice piece of thought on what our society's criminal state might be in with an: article titled, 'Townsend: 52% in Texas youth prisons suffer mental health problems.' This is an article in which Cherie Townsend, an executive director of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, pleads for officials to "improve their early intervention efforts" to help juvenile delinquents before they even become one. She uses the percentage, "52 percent of teens and other youngsters held at the state's six juvenile detention facilities have been diagnosed with at least moderate mental health problems," while the adult system has "1/4 to 1/3 of offenders with mental illness" diagnosed with severe mental illness. There's a big difference here that Cherie seems to ignore; you can't compare two systems on two different scales if you're trying to show percentages. The juvenile system includes moderate illness while adult systems only include severe illness, how can you compare when you don't have all the data?


  Continuing this article it points out another thing that Cherie Townsend missed. Rep. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican legislator, "suggested authorities might be classifying too many young people as having mental health problems." We all hear about teenagers going through a rebellious phase and act out, it's a natural step in growing up so should we slap a DSV-IV label on them and dope them up with drugs? Rep. Charles Perry thinks that we already are, "I know kids that act out that have no mental health issues."


  I agree with Rep. Charles Perry and the opinion of Grits for Breakfast, that we love to label and provide a miracle pill that will cure your 'sickness.' Daydream a little? Oh, you're ADD, here's a bottle of medication to help you focus. Your kids talks back to you? Don't worry, he has an anxiety disorder and there's medication for that. Juveniles put in the justice system are judged constantly for their crime and when they don't talk about why they did what they did and they're "diagnosed with mental illnesses, too frequently and sometimes inappropriately, in hope that their behavior issues can be medicated away." Although there are mentally ill people out there, some in the criminal systems just got a bad hand; "a crappy home life, absent or ineffective parents, poverty, grief, etc."


  All in all, if 52% of our juvenile system is mentally unhealthy then maybe we all might need a Mental Health Hotline?