National Center for Youth Law | Mental Health Archives

Mental Health

Our collective failure to provide children and adolescents appropriate and effective mental health services has tragic consequences on their ability to succeed in school, form healthy relationships, and thrive as adults. The National Center for Youth Law works to expand access to appropriate mental health services for low-income children and to limit dangerous practices such as the overuse of psychotropic medications on children in foster care.

Campaigns

Ensuring Adequate Oversight for the Safe Administration of Psychotropic Medications to Youth in Foster Care - Missouri

June 15, 2017

NCYL is partnering with Children’s Rights, and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics to ensure Missouri enacts policies and practices that reduce the risk of harm to the children in its custody.

Reducing the Over-Medication of Children and Youth in Foster Care - California

December 21, 2016

California foster children are being prescribed dangerous and unnecessary doses of psychotropic medications. Often the drugs are used as chemical restraints, rather than for medically accepted purposes. Over-medicated children face serious, life-long damage to their health, including morbid obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular damage. Foster youth…

Implementing a System of Home and Community-Based Mental Health Services

December 21, 2016

This campaign has worked to establish and implement of a system that focuses on intensive home and community-based mental health services for all Medicaid-eligible children under the age of 21.

Latest News

Schools Sued For Sending Students With Disabilities To Psych Wards - Disability Scoop

June 24, 2021

Advocates for kids with disabilities and minority children sued Palm Beach County’s public schools this week over their practice of forcing hundreds of students a year to undergo mental health exams at psychiatric facilities.…

Palm Beach County schools sued over their use of Baker Act to send kids to psych wards - Palm Beach Post

June 22, 2021

Advocates for disabled and minority children sued Palm Beach County’s public schools Tuesday over their practice of forcing hundreds of students a year to undergo mental health exams at psychiatric facilities.…

Senator Anthony Portantino Speaks on the Importance of Mental Health Awareness - My Burbank

May 21, 2021

Mental health is a subject that hits close to home for Portantino. His older brother suffered from severe depression and went through three county systems to seek treatment for his mental health struggles. After multiple suicide attempts, Portantino’s brother sadly ended up taking his own…

Editorial: County schools must repudiate use of Baker Act - The Palm Beach Post

May 12, 2021

Questions abound about the Palm Beach County School District officials’ troubling use of the Baker Act to handle unruly children — so flagrantly misusing the statute that in a recent four-year span they shipped 5-year-olds to psychiatric facilities eight times. Fifty-nine times, they Baker Acted…

Portantino Introduces Bill to Require Age-Appropriate Mental Health Education - Pasadena Now

January 14, 2021

State Sen. Anthony J. Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) has introduced Senate Bill 224, which would require all students in California to receive age-appropriate mental health education.…