Mississippi's mental health system is failing children from low-income households. The state fails to invest in community-based services and instead pumps the bulk of its resources into ineffective, expensive institutions. Parents are often forced to choose between hospitalizing their children or foregoing mental health services altogether.
The SPLC Mississippi Youth Justice Project and other civil rights and mental health advocates sued the state of Mississippi today in an effort to improve the state's mental health system for children, which fails to invest in community-based services and instead pumps the bulk of its resources into ineffective, expensive institutions.