Our Broken Mental Health System and How Hurts Our Youth

60 Minutes began Sunday night with a segment on the mental health system in the US and how it is failing our youth.  I listened to the 60 Minutes podcast and did not see the video of the segment.  Even still, it is very powerful and recommend all readers to check it out.

Here is how the story began:

Last November 19th, Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds was slashed and stabbed repeatedly by his own son. Gus Deeds was 24 years old and had been struggling with mental illness. He and his father had been in an emergency room just hours before the attack but didn’t get the help that they needed. The story of what went wrong with his medical care exposes a problem in the way that America handles mental health. It’s a failure that came to the fore with the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The vast majority of mental patients are not violent. But this is a story about the fraction who are a danger to themselves or others. Parents of mentally ill children in crisis often find, as Sen. Deeds did, that they have nowhere to go. Creigh Deeds bears the scars of this failure on his face, his body and his soul.