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Cruelest Choice Faces Parents of Mentally Ill, By SHAILA K. DEWAN For the parents of some severely mentally ill children, it can come to this: pleading with emergency-room psychiatrists who have no good answers and listening grimly as caseworkers explain their lack of options. What these mothers and fathers are being urged to do is agonizing: give up custody of their children and turn them over to the state's child welfare agencies so that they can get the mental health care that they otherwise cannot afford or gain access to. Private insurance does not pay for children who may need a year or more of intense treatment, at costs that can exceed $60,000 a year. For the many who cannot afford that, the number of state-financed beds for mental health patients is tiny and the wait long. But a child placed in foster care can be sent to facilities that, while not designed to deal with mentally ill children, have many more openings and at least some psychiatric services...
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