This is in response to the feature story, “Out of control kids” (June 22). Children with behavioral health needs require effective, evidence-based treatment approaches by professionals who have the level of specialization necessary to understand each child’s needs.

While Maine’s adult mental health system has oversight through the consent decree, children in Maine lack the depth of mental health services necessary to help young people understand their illness and successfully reach adulthood.

Far too often, society ignores the mental health of children. In addition to the stigmatizing attitude of labeling children as problems, we dismiss concerning behavior as stages in early childhood and warning signs in teens as phases. Many mental illnesses have genetic components and children need to receive services as soon as the first concern arises. This is not a call to medicate all children, but rather to listen to them as individuals.

As a community, we impart far too much trauma in the lives of young people. From child physical abuse, to sexual abuse, to parents with substance use disorder, adults create adverse childhood experiences and then we are shocked when children have behavioral struggles. We are expecting conduct from those with developing brains that adults do not deliver.

A clear sign of the failure to comprehensively meet the needs of children is the use of restraints and seclusion.

The use of those behavior modification tools are clear signs that some schools have not made an adequate investment in training staff to respond to the needs of children in a better way. Restraints are neither therapeutic or skill development in nature and, most profoundly, they give adults the naive impression that the situation has been stabilized.

It takes good policy, strong leadership, evidence-based training and public education, but child-serving systems can effectively reduce the use of restraints to the point that they are basically eliminated.

I know this because many school districts have been very effective at preventing the use of restraints in spite of having a high percentage of children with IEPs. I also worked for a state government that made a commitment to produce better outcomes for children by working to eliminate all restraints in state regulation.

Jenna Mehnert, MSW, Augusta, executive director, National Alliance on Mental Illness Maine