Usual care for clinicians, unusual care for their clients: rearranging priorities for children's mental health services

Abstract

Garland et al.’s comprehensive review of the state of clinic-based community-based mental health care for U.S. children highlights many recent advances in usual care (UC) while also describing the continued gap between need and service provision, the limited effectiveness of services provided, and a number of other obstructions and dilemmas ranging from perceived stigma on the part of families to limited fiscal resources on the part of service providers. Based on these long-standing concerns, the review summarizes research on three foci for change and offers future directions for each: Enhanced engagement strategies to retain families in services, improved training and support to increase the use of evidenced based practices, and expanded measurement and feedback systems to monitor services in real time. Unaddressed, however, is whether these changes are sufficient to reform children’s mental health care. Even if enacted extensively and outstandingly – a feat we imagine that nobody familiar with UC would realistically expect – will unmet need for care improve and effective services be available to the large number of children in need of mental health services?