Nowhere to Go

A judge of New York City's domestic relations court last week drew up a scathing indictment of what he called "a new shame of the states." Speaking to the National Organization for Mentally Ill Children, Justice Nathaniel Kaplan gave the chilling statistics from a nationwide survey by the organization: with an estimated 500,000 children suffering from mental illness, there are special facilities for only 3,939 children in hospitals or even day centers. Of 52 states and territories, 26 have no public facilities set aside for children. And in 17 states there are no private facilities either.

The usual fate of mentally ill children, said Kaplan, is to be hidden away at home, or dumped into institutions for victims of mental retardation (often confused with mental illness, but actually a different condition), or "committed to questionable custodial care in state hospital mental wards alongside adult psychotics." The result, he declared, is to deprive them of effective treatment until they have "long since left their childhood behind them and, with it, the chance to grow up as contributing members of society."

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