Paul Gionfriddo

The issues that we hope will be debated in Congress this year will put some focus on screening, on earlier identification and intervention regarding mental health concerns, on integrating health and behavioral health care, and on evaluating programs to assure that they lead people to recovery, not to more serious illness and worse outcomes. Surely we can agree on this.

B4Stage4 changes the equation for people with mental illnesses. It gets us focused on what we can do early, before a crisis occurs, to change trajectories of lives.

The right question isn’t “what more could I have done for my child?” It’s “what can we all do for all our children?” We need to start by identifying and addressing their needs early, and not pitting parents, clinical professionals, and educators against one other. We begin by standing together, not falling apart.

When we confuse "danger" and "mental illness," we make the wrong choices about how to respond to nothing more than a serious health condition. This makes mental illnesses the only chronic conditions we wait until Stage 4 to treat, and then often only through incarceration.