Investing in Children to Address the Child Mental Health Crisis

Janet Currie

No 33632, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The child mental health crisis has been described as the “defining public health crisis of our time.” This article addresses three myths about the crisis: (i) the idea that the crisis is new; (ii) the belief that increases in youth suicide mainly reflect deterioration in children’s underlying mental health; and (iii) the myth that investments in children have little impact on children’s mental health. In fact, the cri- sis has existed for decades, youth suicides vary asynchronously with other mental health measures and are impacted by external factors such as firearms legislation, and investments can improve child mental health and prevent suicide.

JEL-codes: I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03
Note: CH EH LE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33632.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33632

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33632
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().