ARREST MY KID.

• Author: Cusac, Anne-Marie
• Position: Arrest may be only means for parents to get proper mental health care for their children

He Needs Mental Health Care

Last August, Wanda Yanello of Plano, Texas, was terribly worried. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Heather King, had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The illness seemed to be accelerating. Heather was punching holes in the wall and was gone for days on end.

"She was on the street all the time," recalls Yanello. "Say 7 o'clock tonight, she'd go out the door. I can't block the door. And she'd be gone two hours or two days. She's ended up in Texarkana, five hours away. She's ended up in College Station. That's nine hours away."

While on the street, Heather was raped, and her case was reported to the Richardson, Texas, police department. Yanello says her daughter at other times was beaten up, had twice attempted suicide, and was taking drugs.

"Two of the best psychiatrists in Dallas" diagnosed her daughter with bipolar disorder and recommended long-term inpatient care, Yanello says. But Yanello's insurance lapsed, and she couldn't afford the treatment.

So she watched for an opportunity. And she found one when Heather went for a spin in Yanello's car. "She only took it for four miles, thirty-five minutes, but I had her arrested," says Yanello. "Every system along the way has failed my child, and I had high hopes that the juvenile justice system would come through."

Heather King received a referral to a residential treatment program, and her mom picked out the facility. Yanello chose the Campbell Griffin Center, a 120-bed program, six hours away from home, in San Antonio.

Yanello drove Heather to the center herself. It turned out that was a very unusual thing to do. "They said, `What are you doing? No parent brings a child in here. Only police officers bring kids in here. This is a juvenile correctional facility,' "says Yanello.

Yanello claims that Heather did not receive psychiatric care for the first four weeks. After that, the center allegedly refused to treat Heather for bipolar disorder, saying she had attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder instead. The center did give Heather medication for that, says Yanello.

Officials at the Campbell Griffin Center say they cannot comment on individual patients. Julien Devereux, central division director of Campbell Griffin's parent company, Cornell Company of Houston, also refused to discuss it. "I have no comment on any of that," he says. "I assume that if she has a complaint, she has taken it to the director, and they have dealt with that." He does say, however, that the facility employs two "licensed, competent psychiatrists" for the 106 children at the center, about 70 percent of whom are on psychotropic medications.

According to Yanello, the facility has also given Heather a pen to click whenever she feels manic. "I went to visit her," says Yanello. "She was pacing, clicking a pen. She was like a dog in distemper. It was a mess. To this day, she hasn't been treated for the diseases she went in there with. She's been in since February 20, and nobody will listen to me."

No one will listen to Wanda Yanello because, in having her child arrested, she effectively gave up custody of her daughter to the juvenile justice system. Until Heather is released, Yanello has no say in her treatment. "I've lost all my rights," says Yanello. "I'm not allowed to speak to her doctor."

Yanello fears for her daughter's future. "She is, at this moment, sitting in that place, manic for the last forty-five days, and no one's doing anything," she says. "I just know she's fifteen, and if I don't get help for her now, she's going to end up graduating from this juvenile crap to prison."

As stark as it might seem, Yanello's situation is not unique. Across the country, parents who see no other solution are having their children arrested in the hopes of getting them mental health care that they can't afford or that their insurance companies won't cover.

"It is a national tragedy that American parents feel forced to have their children locked up simply in order to obtain desperately needed mental health services," says Paul Wellstone, the Democratic Senator from Minnesota. "This is a horrendous symptom of the discrimination against mentally ill children rampant in our health care system today."

Just how often parents do this is an open question. Chris Koyanagi, policy director for Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington, D.C., says it is "quite common." But there are no good numbers "because there is nobody in the bureaucracy asking, `Why did this child come in?' No one says, `Is it the parent seeking services?' There's no way to know other than talking to the families." And many parents who have their children arrested may be too ashamed to admit they have done so.

Chris Siegfried, a Texas-based social worker and mental health consultant, says parents who go this route often have children with extensive mental health needs requiring specialized or longer-term care--the sort that many HMOs don't cover.

"The motive is strictly financial for most parents," says Siegfried. "Parents still want to get their child some help but don't...