Mental Health Policy

One mental health policy issue that is important in America right now is safeguarding the mental health of children. That is why the Mental Health Services for Students Act of 2020 was written (HR 1109, 2020). This is especially true since the lockdowns of 2020, which have worsened the mental health issues of young people, as can be seen by increased rates of reported depression and suicide; but in fact rates were already rising, as reported by Heid (2020): Between 2009 and 2017, rates of depression among kids ages 14 to 17 increased by more than 60%, the study found. The increases were nearly as steep among those ages 12 to 13 (47%) and 18 to 21 (46%), and rates roughly doubled among those ages 20 to 21. In 2017the latest year for which federal data are availablemore than one in eight Americans ages 12 to 25 experienced a major depressive episode. Thus, it is clear from the evidence that mental health among the vulnerable population of young people is something that needs to be addressed. Furthermore, this issue has only worsened since 2020 because more are more children have been isolated from peers as schools have closed and governments have placed restrictions on going out in public or meeting with people in private. As Liu, Bao, Huang, Shi and Lu (2020) report in The Lancet, quarantining children as a result of COVID-19, has presented a problem because companionship is crucial to the psychosocial development of children. Children need to be around other children to help themselves develop security and formulate their own identities (Fauzia & Mangunsong, 2020). This paper will discuss the need for an improved mental health policy with respect to COVID restrictions so as to protect the youth population.

The youth population is unique because it is a vulnerable population that will at some point become part of the adult population. It is inevitable that this should occur, and it is a change that cannot be said to be experienced by other vulnerable populations. Among minority populations there is no guarantee that they will ever stop being a minority population. Among the elderly population there is no hope of their ever dialing back the years. The youth population alone will change and become an adult population. That makes their development as young people all the more important. If they do not grow and develop rightly, they will enter into adulthood without any of the necessary qualities needed to be resilient, self-actualizing, and in possession of good mental health. Mental health for young people is, therefore, an issue that needs to be taken very seriously in America.

Already Congress has taken steps to address the mental health issues of children in schoolsbut...…young persons life was suddenly flipped upside downschool from home on a computer; no playing outside; no seeing friends; no going to see relative. No one questioned the effect this policy would have on children. Yet it obviously did have an effect: at first, they were told it would only be for 2 weeks, but then it turned into 500 days and counting. Children are still being forced in some places to shield their faces, even though Health Ministers around the world have confessed or have been caught on hot mics confessing (as is the case with Israels Health Minister) that these media-promoted precautions are scare tactics and nothing more to get people to voluntarily take the emergency vaccination.

This type of media-driven, big vaccine industry-driven narrative is horrendously affecting the mental health of the one vulnerable population that will change to become adults. If this population is not saved from these devastating and inhumane effects, the next generation of adults will be impaired by numerous mental health disorders and will it be an immense struggle on the part of all society to help them. That is why this policy needs to do more than just supply funding for schools. It needs to address the reckless manner in which the media is permitted and encouraged by various leaders to perniciously promote a message of fear surround the pandemic. That messaging and the…