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

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.…

A Pharma-Backed Effort to Curb Oversight on Psych Meds Fails in California Legislature - Chronicle of Social Change

May 13, 2020

Following pressure from foster youth advocates, legislation that would have scaled back patient protections for Californians prescribed the most powerful psychiatric drugs will no longer be heard by the state Legislature this year.…

Advocates Call Out Institutionalization Cycle in Washington - Courthouse News Service

August 20, 2018

Representing minors who have been bounced around psychiatric hospitals and group homes in Washington, D.C., children and disability advocates claim in a federal class action that the district is shirking its duty to provide intensive community-based services.…

Advocates File Suit Saying D.C. Is Failing To Help Kids With Serious Mental Health Needs - WAMU - FM

August 15, 2018

A number of disability advocacy organizations, along with the law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel, have filed suit against the District of Columbia for what they say is a failure to adequately address the needs of young people struggling with serious mental health disorders.…

DC sued over failure to help children with mental health troubles - Washington Examiner

August 14, 2018

Hundreds of emotionally troubled children have been placed into “harmful and unnecessary” detention centers or psychiatric facilities because the District of Columbia failed to help them as required under federal law, according to a class action lawsuit filed Tuesday.…