The annual cost of treating child and adolescent mental illness was estimated at $11.6 billion in 1998 (1), not including costs incurred outside medical settings. Yet educational, juvenile justice, and child welfare agencies all incur costs related to childhood mental illness (2), and children often use services from many agencies, to deal with many problems. Studies that examine service use for a limited set of providers (e.g., references 1, 3, 4) or focus on a single diagnosis or presenting problem (5–7) will underestimate the broader community costs of early mental illness.
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