In this country at this time, we sacrifice an equivalent number of deaths as were lost in the 9/11 World Trade Towers collapse every single month, like clockwork, to teen suicide. In this state, we lose a child every other day. But suicide is just the tip of the mental-health iceberg.

There are many children who suffer in our midst. Children with real mental illness. Children from loving homes as well as children immersed in family chaos. The myth is that children with difficulties are never your own, they live on some street, you could spot them a mile away.

The facts are different. Across the entire country, in every city or town, in our own neighborhoods, our own homes, about one in six children is having a problem right now. A real problem for them and a disaster for all of us. A disaster that we are left to repair after the horse has left the barn.

Children have every conceivable category of mental illness. With depression their experience can be severe or it can be low grade and chronic. The earlier a child becomes depressed, the more likely that person, as an adult, will be severely and repeatedly depressed. The same is true for the anxiety disorders. Social phobia is the most common form of anxiety, a fear of people so intense that a child feels scrutinized, judged. She or he may tolerate people, but only feel relaxed when alone or in the company of a very small number of people. Children have panic attacks, often before they have words to express what’s happening to them. Children from traumatic experience develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, with the same predictability as any other age group.

Estimates on adolescents with chemical dependency suggest that 1 out of 10 teens with a substance abuse problem receives professional care. Of those 1 out of 10 receives adequate care. So it seems we are totally prepared to treat only 1 percent of teens with drug and alcohol problems.

Childhood psychosis is a tragedy. If the process can be quickly diagnosed and appropriately treated, we can spare some of the brain changes that are a hallmark of that disorder, we can arrest the whittling away of brain structures in a process that slips out of control. The very same brains structures that keep you and me from experiencing hallucinations and delusions.

Why is that important? It’s a perfect example of our public policy short-sightedness. It costs about $15,000 per year to treat an adult schizophrenic as an outpatient. A person can’t get in and out of a hospital Emergency Room for under $500 per visit, the location where care for the medical needs of this population is often provided. If, as is too often the case, that adult gets jailed for aberrant behavior caused in large part by schizophrenic symptoms, that occurs at a cost of $570,000 per year. If that adult is hospitalized in a state facility, the cost is $55,000 to $120,000 per year. If we treat psychosis early and well, we have a chance of never needing those drastic measures. We have a chance to help these children preserve a more normal existence.

If money savings doesn’t interest you, consider appropriate treatment capable of preventing processes that injure a child’s brain. Depression, untreated, gradually causes real changes in the memory area of the brain, decreasing the size of the hippocampus. So the depressed child suffers three injuries, first in overwhelming sadness, second in risk of added difficulty with memory for all their remaining years, third in increased odds that their life will be punctuated by severe episodes of depression. Bipolar Disorder has a similar story, with the singular exception that 20 percent of bipolar patients succeed in their own suicide. With treatment, much of this is preventable.

The state of Washington recently shared a draft of a study of the prevalence of mental illness. That study makes clear that the delivery of mental health services in Washington is totally inadequate to address the scope of the needs of our population. With that knowledge, the Mental Health Division of our state, in addressing the Mental Health Council representatives (executive directors and chief executive officers of mental health centers in Washington), took the position that our Mental Health Division would do nothing to advocate for appropriate levels of funding to achieve adequate treatment provision. We further find out that the final draft is not released. Our response to that position should be outrage.

The Mental Health Division is not advocating for the mental health needs of our children. Neither do they advocate particularly well for adults. Accepting the status quo, they become a part of the problem, not the solution.

When, as a child psychiatrist, I know professionally that the longer a child lingers in an anxiety, mood or psychotic disorder, the more likely that disorder will follow them into their adult years, I am certain we are talking about a public health nightmare: preventable illness that we choose to ignore.

Of all medical diseases, ranked in order of cost to society through lost productivity, treatment costs and death, four of the top ten are mental illnesses. The most expensive disease in society today in total cost impact is depression, depression whose continuous presence we guarantee when we neglect to treat our children.

Children do not vote. Children do not organize sophisticated political agendas that garner the attention of the public. Children are left to be collected, or not, by a safety net of under-funded Child Protective services, under-funded foster care, and inadequately funded mental health services. Money is held as an absolute value; as a result all considerations of the care of children are condescendingly dismissed as “not possible in this fiscal climate.”

I don’t wake up in the morning in order to participate in the neglect of the wonderful young people I serve professionally. If, in my personal life, my child needs medical care, no matter what the condition of my checkbook, I will do exactly what is necessary to make that happen. Whether it is my child of your child we are talking about, I or are you, willing to put them at risk of a severe, life long series of mental illness episodes by opting not to treat them now? Am I, or are you, satisfied in the knowledge that the children do not have access to adequate psychological and psychiatric services? Does the thought of losing a child to chemical dependency, psychosis, severe anxiety, mood disorder or suicide, when those futures may be averted, alarm you as much as it sickens me?

I do not believe the energy for change will come from within the system. I think it is up to each and every one of us to communicate with our state representatives. We must charge our government with the responsibility to allow available, accurate estimates of prevalence and need for mental health services to dictate the shaping of an adequate policy and funding for the provision of those services. To do less is to tacitly approve of the ongoing neglect of our children.

Write your representative. Call them. E-mail them. Be relentless. Don’t be bashful, demand adequate funding for the mental health of our children.

Dr. Tim Truschel, medical director of the Evergreen Counseling Center, and provides mental health services to Peninsula children.