See How Your Dollars Make a Difference

The Need

Today more than four million children and teens in the United States contend with mental illnesses and disorders that affect their performance at school and their relationships with peers, friends, and family -- yet only 20 percent of these children receive the proper medical care they require.

Nationwide, approximately 14 percent of high school students with mental illness drop out of school before graduation; this is the highest dropout rate of any disability group. What’s more, untreated mental illnesses often intensify and become more complex over time, possibly developing into co-occurring disorders. In the absence of proper treatment and education, many of these young people lose their health insurance and often are placed in jails or juvenile detention centers where their conditions worsen. 

NAMI's Response

Education and health professionals agree that increased awareness of mental illness and early identification and treatment can greatly improve children’s and teens’ well-being and mental health. It is clear that young people must receive the help they need before they lose vital learning opportunities, watch hope for comfort and happiness diminish, or face life-threatening situations.

NAMI’s Child & Adolescent Action Center (CAAC) lobbies for increased education about mental illness, earlier identification of symptoms, and improved care for children and teens. In partnership with NAMI’s Education Department, the CAAC promotes Parents and Teachers as Allies, a grassroots program for school professionals that helps educators better recognize and understand the early warning signs of mental illnesses and guides them to intervene with families effectively to obtain proper services for their children.

Your support of NAMI can help expand the Parents and Teachers as Allies program as well as fund other CAAC activities such as NAMI Beginnings, our quarterly magazine about children’s issues. It is currently available at no charge to subscribers. View the current issue of NAMI Beginnings online now or order your free subscription from the NAMI Store. 

For more information about Child and Adolescent Action Center activities, visit CAAC’s new Web site, www.nami.org/caac, which contains valuable resources for families and adolescents.

How You Can Help

With your continued support, we are building NAMI into a world-class organization that effects positive change and increased awareness of the mental health issues that affect our nation’s children. Your donation will enable our Child and Adolescent Action Center to continue advocating for all children and teenagers with mental illness. Our goal is for every NAMI consumer and family member to be able to get the support, information, and help they need to best address their mental illness.  

These are just some of the ways that your giving will improve NAMI’s ability to change the landscape of the mental illness battle.  Thank you for all that you do to support the work of NAMI and all of our consumers.  Together, we will overcome the challenges faced by our young people struggling with mental illness.  

|  |

|