How much of this statistic is real “mental illness” and how much of it is the “mental illness professionals’ industry complex” and their inflated call, their self-serving, job-creating call, in this era, about what constitutes a “mental illness” today.
In modern psychological and psychiatric parlance almost any “bad” behavior can be called a “mental illness”.
Instead of kids being disciplined, at home or anywhere else, the school forces the parents to seek “psychological counseling” for the child, the “psychologist” most definitely agrees that the child has a ‘mental illness’, drugs are prescribed, the family’s insurance pays for all the drugs and treatment (as required by state insurance mandates) and all the academic and “health care” professionals pat themselves on the back (while patting their wallets);
while the kid obtains permanent notice that he/she surely has a “mental illness” for which he/she will need to be giving more business to the mental health professionals for the rest of his/her life.
The process continues into adulthood, as the bad behavior is excused as the fault of the illness, and then the person’s insurance from their employment is pulled into the act to keep the “mental health” profession’s business plan covered.
That - job protection, job insurance for health care specialties - is what state health insurance mandates are actually all about.
I bet there is a one-to-one correlation between the rise in the incidence of “mental illness” and the rise in state insurance mandates for all kinds of “counseling” and education requirements that mandate students with “bad behavior” must also receive psychiatric evaluation and “counseling” - also to be covered by mandated insurance coverage.
The professionals get laws that require people be steered to them and laws that require “insurance” pay for it all, and suddenly, in all kinds of “health care issues” there has never been as many “sick” people.
Its a racket.
It's like Global Warming
There was a time when Medicaid didn’t pay providers in Texas if they used a diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder as it was classified as a behavior problem, not mental illness. Don’t know if that is still true or not but I do know that a lot of mental health providers switched to something else - like Adjustment Disorder. It is a racket.