Here in the USA, I believe that we have a horrible tendency to shift the blame for maladjusted children away from its real cause, which I believe is bad (or nonexistent) parenting, and onto the child's mental health...... Instead of looking inside of themselves and identifying how their behavior and lifestyle is negatively affecting their child's psychological development, the bad parent goes to the quack child psychiatrist and gets the child medicated, so that the bad parent can avoid blaming themself and can rationalize their continued poor behavior. While in the meantime the child just gets more screwed up. :(

The single most correlative statistic regarding future criminality of a child in the US is if that child grows up in a household with a single mother. This remains consistent across all other factors such as race, religion, socio-economic status, etc. Now, I am not saying that all single mothers are bad, or that any child that grows up without a dad is going to be messed up... Not suggesting that at all. I think that a good single parent can raise a child very well (indeed, my old man raised my sister and myself just fine by himself). Just that we have a bad sub-culture in the US wherein irresponsible single mothers keep having kids just so that they can get more money from the welfare state instead of actually earning it, and end up being bad parents and screwing up their kids because the kids are just an object through which the bad parent can attach themselves to the "money spigot". The kids start acting out due to a lack of parental empathy, and the bad parent gets them medicated because said parent is too stupid, naive, lazy, or some combination of the above, to see that they the parent are the actual problem. :/

I apologize for the rant. But it is something that makes me sad and a little angry. :( They need to stop giving the money to the bad parent and use it to actually take care of the children that these deadbeat single mothers are screwing up. :/

Ok, I should stop ranting before I make someone angry, hehe. Sorry again! No offense intended to anyone... :3