Behavioral health issue brief: mental health and children: year end report-2003.

Children with mental health problems face many treatment barriers. Health care coverage, cost, access and availability of services are just a few. Parents are often faced with difficult decisions about their child's treatment. Sometimes the task of finding and paying for treatment is too great and the burden falls on state and county systems of care. Beyond the question of how to obtain services is the question of how to provide them. Since 1999, the debates over the use of physical restraints and psychotropic medications has become more heated.