Mental Health RESOURCE BOX listing in your favorites for PTSD Coach, PTSD Family Coach, and 988/Crisis Text Line as always‑available supports for abused and neglected children, youth, and adults.
Crisis lines (U.S.)
No other professional occupies a position as consistently present in the lives of children as their teacher. The power to notice, to intervene, to model empathy, and to seek help can mean the difference between a life of quiet anguish and one of healing and hope
Child Protection in the News (find your state here) KARA reports on child abuse and child protection around the nation counting on readers sharing it with friends and policy makers in your community. Inform your legislators and changemakers and let’s work together to make life better for at-risk children and families.
Ethan was removed from his parents at a young age. I have only come to know him briefly through the course of my work with him at an inpatient facility.
Finally removed from the home forever, but not healed. The invisible scars we carry remain.
Life with our painful childhood memories, triggered behaviors and habits in this world is terribly difficult to manage.
Healing from a broken past is difficult.
No more punishment please.
how over decades, Northern European voters vote for child and family friendly initiatives compared to American voters. Following posts in this series dive deeper into programs and policies that are making life either better or more difficult for U.S. children and families. Sharing these posts with your State Representative will have some impact on the policies and programs necessary to improve the lives of at-risk children and families where you live.
The U.S. system relies primarily on counts of investigations, confirmed maltreatment, foster care placement rates, and basic duration measures. There is very little standardized measurement of child well-being, stability, or parent feedback, and fewer independent audits of outcomes
When child welfare agencies focus only on the outcomes that are easiest to measure—such as placement counts and case closure rates—they risk reinforcing and improving those specific metrics while neglecting critical aspects of child well-being, stability, and long-term success that remain unmeasured
dive into the “ground truth” of the foster care system — exposing the often-unseen hardships children face even after being placed in protective care. Through heartbreaking stories like Alex’s and alarming statistics on abuse
What parents should do after a child’s suicide attempt? Answering caregivers’ frequently …
Kids at Risk Action, Alan and Lauren address the critical issue of the lack of transparency within child welfare systems and its devastating impact on vulnerable children. Despite efforts to raise awareness, many cases of child maltreatment, near-fatalities, and deaths remain hidden from public view due to the absence of standardized reporting and privacy laws that can shield institutions from scrutiny.
Kids at Risk Action, Katie and Jenna explore the deep, lasting effects of childhood trauma through the lens of a survivor’s 77-year journey. They discuss how childhood abuse, often unrecognized, rewires the brain and shapes a lifetime of emotional struggles, relationships, and self-worth issues.
Kids at Risk Action, the hosts address the growing mental health crisis in child welfare, particularly in emergency rooms and foster care systems. They reveal alarming statistics, such as the significant rise in ER visits for children’s mental health crises and the systemic failures that leave many without proper care.
Finally removed from the home forever, but not healed. The invisible scars we carry remain.
Life with our painful childhood memories, triggered behaviors and habits in this world is terribly difficult to manage.
Healing from a broken past is difficult.
No more punishment please.
Ethan was removed from his parents at a young age. I have only come to know him briefly through the course of my work with him at an inpatient facility.
…the economic impact of untreated child abuse. The mental health issues and behavior problems of high ACEs children drive much of the violence, desperation, and dysfunction afflicting so many American citizens
For emergency room doctors, they are a sad and familiar sight: Children returning again and again in the grip of mental health crises
America’s CHILDHOOD TRAUMA and ACES Impact INVISIBLE CHILDREN
Expecting Different Results From Prison for Kids
Repeated childhood trauma does cruel things to children. Things that never go away. Those things (behaviors/thoughts/self-harm/suicide) can be managed with help. Without help, depression, pain and sadness often become overwhelming.
Repeated childhood trauma does cruel things to children. Things that never go away. Those things (behaviors/thoughts/self-harm/suicide) can be managed with help. Without help, depression, pain and sadness often become overwhelming.
Growing up in a home beaten, raped or starved by the most important authority in your life, means that for you, authority is not to be respected – it is to be hated and feared. Real life stories about this here.
Uncooperative often violent response to authority figures is normal for traumatized children. It’s driven by repeated pain and terror visited upon a child that has been unable to escape repeated trauma and abuse.
Repeated childhood trauma does cruel things to children. Things that never go away. Those things (behaviors/thoughts/self-harm/suicide) can be managed with help. Without help, depression, pain and sadness often become overwhelming.
Social media, political and community outrage
and COVID Lockdown stress are overwhelming mental health caregivers and institutions in every community – Child suicide/self-harm are rising dramatically Speak out, Share this widely
This is a book about childhood trauma, its impact on children and the impact traumatized youth are having on our communities and society. It is a guide to seeing and dealing with the most critical issues and causes of abuse, and solutions.
Hundreds of MN children are being abandoned by their caregivers in MN hospitals. Many are children raised in toxic homes then shuttled off into State/County foster and group homes
COVID’s impact on children’s mental health will be felt for a very long time. Especially vulnerable are children suffering from extended exposure to violence and deprivation that lived in toxic homes without access to help during the pandemic lockdowns – Read the MedPage article here…
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association have joined forces to declare a national emergency in children’s mental health, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Today’s declaration is an urgent call to policymakers at all levels of government — we must treat this mental health crisis like the emergency it is,” said AAP President Lee Savio Beers, MD, in a statement.
MN A.G. Keith Ellison’s response to the public outcry for punishment is normal (And that’s a shame). Our need for punishment over restorative justice is the American way. We don’t care if charging children and youth as adults brings more crime and recidivism.
For every six-year old foster child’s successful suicide (Kendrea Johnson), there are hundreds of attempts and many hundreds of self-harming incidents in hospitals and Child Protective Services (CPS) – many if not most of these incidents are never reported.
For every child killed while in child protection (recent Safe Passage investigative study of child maltreatment deaths) there are hundreds of children starved, beaten, raped and otherwise abused that are never known outside the home
People suffering from untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed in interactions with law enforcement. Recently in Utah, a 13-year-old boy with autism was shot several times by police after his mother dialed 911 to request help as her son was experiencing a mental breakdown.
“Mental Health Crisis + Emergency Rooms” is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a strong piece demonstrating the huge increase in chemical restraints and ER mental health visits by children, but it misses the heart of the story.
Out of the blue murderous psychosis in normal people is rare.
It’s not likely that this boy led a normal life prior to this violence.
“I’m not for killing kids and stuff” (officer Omar Bellow). For eight seconds officers fired 66 rounds from Glock service weapons towards the children. You can read the NY Times article details here. There is nothing easy about being in law enforcement in America today (or teaching, or social work, health services or child care). The numbers of seriously troubled youth are off the charts and so many children have serious often violent behavior problems.
Terrible trauma (like generations of slavery) and the behaviors and conflicts it creates need to be identified and discussed if they are to be fixed. Do we want higher graduation rates and lower crime and recidivism rates for our at risk youth and families?
Charlamagne Tha God has Launched a Mental Wealth Alliance Foundation to establish fundamental and far-reaching generational support for Black Mental Health.
Share this widely.
Fairview Masonic Children’s hospital has been overwhelmed with 145 emergency pediatric psych cases since September. A makeshift shelter in an ambulance garage is all that’s available at Fairview Masonic to protect children suffering from the traumas of child abuse and homelessness.
Not far from my home, six year old Kendrea Johnson suicided by hanging while in foster care. Gabriel Fernandez & Seven year old Gabriel Myer suicides drew national media attention about the same time.
My first visit to a four year old State Ward as a CASA volunteer guardian ad Litem was at the suicide ward of a local Hospital. That visit to a tiny little girl who failed to kill herself has caused me to rethink child protection.
Kendrea (6) and Gabriel (7) successfully hung themselves a few years ago. They came from different states but suffered the same afflictions. Kendrea lived not far from me.
As a CASA guardian ad Litem, the commonality of self hate by the children I worked with in child protection – being so different, so unlovable that even your mother abandoned you, is devastating.
More than 285,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine -America has had 57 times as many school shootings as Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom all combined.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association have declared a national emergency in children’s mental health, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Human Rights and the Psychotropic Medicating of Children is common in foster care and juvenile justice in the U.S. Self-harm and suicidal ideation play a roll in the early death and physical harm these children suffer.
Does medicating Foster Children without therapy cause more problems than it solves?
Medicine is changing – and it needs to.
Read about KARA’s pilot Portages program to provide 100 youth
with a powerful new mental health resource (share this widely)
COVID is Hammering Children’s Mental Health
These charts show steadily rising trends over the ten year period before COVID. The data pointing to youth planning suicide in the past year is very serious (2019).
This is the longest and most powerful and articulate suicide note I’ve ever read and it has great meaning to me for its power to relate these two incomprehensible sorrows (abuse & suicide).
Suicide is now the 2nd leading cause of death among 10 to 24 year olds. Over 1 million children under 6 are prescribed psychiatric drugs in America today.
Recent Child Self-Harm & Suicide (state reporting summer 2021)
Disabled children are 3 to 10 times more likely to be abused than children without disabilities.
Today, the chronic high stress of the COVID lockdown is growing anxiety, depression and behavioral problems everywhere, but especially in the homes of at risk children.
This may be our community’s (nation’s) most serious health problem. Add the psychotropic medicating of abused children & I think it is.