What do parents do when they have a teen who is cutting school, using drugs and threatening the parents in their own home?  You would think contact the school, call the police or seek treatment.  Many parents have done this when their child is acting out and needs help, but the parents to their surprise receive little help.  Therapy can only be provided once a week because the insurance only allows once a week.  Due to budget cut backs, the schools have no resources to help and the police choose to see it as a family problem so they do not get involved.
  These kids need help and these parents are asking, begging for help but they keep getting turned down.  They receive no help.  Often these kids are the ones who go to school and cause mass destruction or commit suicide in violent ways.  These sad situations could be avoided if someone listened to the parents.  In order for this to occur we must change how we do things.
  First we must invest more money in mental health and insurance companies must have laws requiring them to follow the recommendations of the treatment providers.  Right now a hospital can decide that a child needs to be hospitalized but if the insurance states that it doesn't meet their guidelines, then the child is released.  Who knows the child better, the hospital or the insurance company?
  We cannot blame parents or kids who are mentally ill and go to school and kill people when our society turns a blind eye until it is too late.
  Parents and treatment providers need to unite and demand that insurance companies start authorizing the treatment that is necessary and we also must demand that the State stop cutting children's mental health and start investing in it.
  If a child is mentally ill and our society fails to provide treatment, then we cannot complain when that child acts out violently or cannot work and ends up on welfare.  We must provide help when it is needed.  Write your representatives and senators and demand that we take care of our kids.