A real future for young people with mental illness The transition to adulthood is a daunting task for most young people - it may include attempts to graduate from high school to find a full-time job or enter college, to live independently, to form long term relationships and becoming a parent. Although their goals and desires are the same as those of their peers, young people with mental illness or substance abuse disorders, particularly those in transition from institutional care, face a more difficult road. For many young people who reside in residential treatment facilities or foster homes, the age of 21 may feel like falling from a bluff.
A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (in 2008) has highlighted the many challenges to be about 2.4 million non-institutionalized young people aged 18-26, who have serious mental illness and the transition from child delivery systems Adult Care. The report, which excludes children who are homeless, in foster care or juvenile justice systems and criminal, however, identified significant barriers to obtaining housing, mental health and health care, and the employment. The GAO studied the young are much less likely than their peers to graduate from high school (64% against 83%) or to enter college (32% against 51%).
Although the GAO report raises important issues that must be addressed by states and the federal government, the study has serious flaws. For example, it failed to include the youth most at risk of chronic homelessness or incarceration, those who are most difficult time of transition: young people with mental illness regardless of diagnosis, which are institutionalized or who already live in the streets.
The GAO study focused on the public service system is the official services and supports children receive when they go to a birthday party to another. Various program eligibility rules differ significantly for children and adults. One in four children receiving SSI does not qualify as adults. Similar problems occur with Medicaid. The report also noted the lack of programs for adults to meet the unique needs of young adults: What 24-yearold wants to spend time in group therapy where the average age of other participants is 47 ? These important issues must be addressed, but maintains low incomes and formal mental health treatment can not do much to guide the youth from both the swamp of public programs and the enormous challenges of daily life as an adult.
For young people with serious mental illness to succeed in the adult world, they need more than treatment. They must be truly integrated into their communities. They need jobs that offer the skills, dignity, independence, and peers. And they need a caring and responsible adults and older who can help them make better choices, learn from their mistakes, and applaud their successes, no matter how small.
The national mental health organizations as community service providers, can create these opportunities in their own programs or appropriate community collaborations. The Children's Village at Westchester, New York, which serves children in a residential treatment center, is a notable example. Children's Village has created a program for youth in transition-age, work assessment for Youth (WAY), for children who are most at risk of incarceration, homelessness and unemployment. The program starts in the central residential and continues for 5 years after the young into the community.
The main elements of the program for young WAY transition as advocacy for education and mentoring programs to facilitate academic achievement, work experience and work ethic training enab.
Posted on July 6, 2010.
