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15,000 mentally ill children in detention centers because treatment is unavailable

Physician Practice Advisor, July 14, 2004

Roughly 15,000 children with mental illness in 33 states who faced no criminal charges were kept in detention centers in 2003 because there was no treatment available for their illness according to a report released at a Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. Witnesses testified that many parents don't have access to schools that offer the treatment their children need or don't have insurance that covers the treatment, according to Kaiser Family Foundation.

The report also found that:

• 7% of all children in detention centers (roughly 2,000 children) remain incarcerated because of a lack of access to treatment
• 117 detention centers incarcerated mentally ill children younger than 11
• 66%  of detention centers said they resorted to incarceration "because there was no place else for them to go," the Times reports (New York Times, 7/8).

"It is a terrible miscarriage of justice to detain or incarcerate children in order that they might be able to have a chance of getting any mental health services," said Judge Ernestine Gray of New Orleans Juvenile Court. "Our detention facilities should not be used as substitute mental hospitals."

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