No, of course they're not. The U.S. has a major shortage of child mental health professionals, which means that school counselors, pediatricians, and probation officers are the ones picking up the slack. And while these people often do heroic work under very difficult circumstances, in many cases, what's most needed is professional mental health care. Which never arrives.
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Many of these teens will then carry their mental illnesses through to adulthood. It's estimated that half of all mental illness begin by the age of 14, with up 75 percent of them occurring by the age of 24. Which means that by the time your daughter's on her third divorce or has lost her job thanks to her habit of pooping on people's desks, she might have been suffering from mental illness for decades.
Which isn't to say that parents are that great at catching and dealing with mental illnesses ...
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