Schools can play a crucial role in helping the 10 percent to 20 percent of children worldwide who would benefit from some form of mental health treatment, experts say.
About 75 percent of adults who use mental health services had a diagnosable disorder before age 18, according to a new series on mental health interventions in schools published Oct. 7 in The Lancet Psychiatry.
But in the United States and other wealthy nations, only one-quarter of children with a mental health problem get diagnosed or treated, and the percentage is much lower in poorer nations, the authors of the series said.
"Mental illness often starts in adolescence but doesn't end in adolescence: it is a life-long disorder," Dr. Mina Fazel, a child psychiatrist at the University of Oxford in England and lead author of the series, said in a journal news release.
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