There is reason for hope the children's mental health initiative

 Picture from Yakima County Extension WSU 

"Children are the worlds most valuable resource, and it's best hope for the future." JFK

There is reason for hope, because there are evidence-based practices which help children with emotional and behavioral difficulties and their families to achieve better outcomes than in the past.  but there is in fact a very serious lag in implementing these evidence-based practices in real world practice.    I share excerpts from study titled, "The Evidence and Science of Medicating Children," by Jacqueline A. Sparks at The University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI and Barry L. Duncan Institute for the Study of Therapeutic Change in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.; published in 2004; and a report from the Policy Lab of the Children's Hospital of Philadelpia Research Institute titled, "Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Children published in the fall of 2010.  I used two documents that are six year apart to partially demonstrate the lag I spoke of above, and because of the content one is about the ethics of psychiatric drugs being used to treat children, and the other about the policies which "the system" uses, both offer insight into the problems and potential solutions---the solutions are the reason I have hope.