ARE THE KIDS ALRIGHT


Houston Chronicle
MIKE McDANIEL
June 24, 2004

ALRIGHT
State's Mental-Health System Examined in 'Kids'

You think you have troubles? Imagine what it would be like to have a child who wants to kill himself. Imagine being so afraid of your mentally unstable son that you no longer want him living in your house.

Imagine this: You want to get your troubled child some help, but there is no place that will take him - not because people are uncaring but because the system is on overload, state funds are sparse and there are no beds to be had.

Rather than hammering into our heads the severe financial shortcomings of Texas' mental-health system, Austin filmmakers Karen Bernstein and Ellen Spiro gently aim for our hearts. Their often-horrifying documentary, Are the Kids Alright? (8 tonight, Channel 8), relies on the intimate, firsthand accounts of families in crisis.

The film does more than trace the outlines of what's wrong - a lack of funds is what's wrong. By following the stories of families affected, we get a better idea of how complex mental disease can be, how far-reaching the problem is (an estimated 420,000 Texans younger than 18 qualify), and how desperate families can get in dealing with it.

Antonia, a 17-year-old living in Houston, has attempted suicide twice. She was making progress through the DePelchin Children's Center, but budget cuts may prevent the center from helping further. The issues of Jeremy, 17, got so bad that his stepmom feared for the lives of her family. "I won't let him back in my house," she tells Judge Jeanne Meurer, who handles many cases involving juvenile and family law.

Meurer, psychiatrist James Boynton of the Texas Youth Commission's stabilization unit in Corsicana, and DePelchin administrator Sherill Carrington are examples of other people whose lives are directly affected by a shortfall in state funds. Clearly, this is a serious problem, one that can't be solved by sending the discarded, hard-to-handle and violent to prison.

Credit Bernstein and Spiro and their benefactors - the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, Houston Endowment and Channel 8, among them - for bringing the issue to our attention.