Childhood Mental Health

Children should not have to face stressful times when they are growing up. As children grow, their brain gradually becomes stronger and less susceptible to stress and other traumatic experiences. However, if children do face extreme trauma and stress when they are younger, they are more likely to be effected by mental illness is they grow older. The situations where this is most evident is in children in poverty; whether that means welfare system, foster-care system, or just poverty. Children in the United States in the past decade that are in the foster-care system, welfare system, or living in poverty, are more likely to have mental health issues than children who are in more affluent lifestyles.
While in the foster-care system, children …show more content…
Surprisingly, more than half of the children that meet child welfare agencies have clinically significant behavioral or emotional problems. On top of this, 40% to 60% of the children in the welfare system also have a psychiatric diagnosis. Although there are federal laws set up to provide children with adequate services to then meet their mental health services, there is not much proof that these standards are being upheld. Even after more investigation of these standards, health agencies found out that only a third of the mental health agencies were aware of the standards to uphold for mental health and children. Without these proper standards being upheld, of course these children are not receiving the correct form of help they need, resulting in a high rise of mental health issues in children in the welfare system. It is no wonder children in the welfare system do not receive the help they get; it is because many agencies “do not know” that there are standards for mental health help for children in the welfare system, as a result, children are not receiving the help they need (Raghavan, Innoue, Ettner, Hamilton, Landsverk,