bringing the conversation into the national spotlight. we would like to hear from you this morning about whether you think mental health programs are adequate. the numbers to call, for republicans, 202-585-3881. for democrats, 202-585-3880. for independents, 202-585-3882. you can also find us online, is a tweet by writing , or sign inc-spanwj on facebook. you come note -- you can also e span.org.journal@c- sidestepping the issue of gun violence, "the washington times" reports -- host: looking at "the washington post," "looking for a mental health dialogue." host: we are asking you this morning if you think that mental health programs are adequate. caller: good morning. i have a recent experience. i have a teenage son that i had to take into the system in maryland. he was not as bad off as the other kids. system, as soon as they are done with you, there is no contact. they will not even return your phone calls. there is a big disconnect between when you have a teenager who needs some help but is unwilling to participate in continuing counseling and does not think they really have a problem. you cannot get your doctor to help you in anyway. to keep them in the process they have to be a threat to themselves or others. because my son is so good at school and not a threat, his grades are suffering but he is well behaved. host: when he first sought help, when you and your family reached out, did he go to and in treatment facility? caller: there was only one option. they would not take him in treatment because he had to be a threat to himself and others. they only had the day program option where they came and picked him up. program, they only kept him for four days before they discharged him, even though i thought he needed more time. now we have to go through the whole process again and i and getting him back in there. i feel like it did not help in the first time, so that is not the best route for him. i felt like if we could just get someone to come to our home to talk to him and all of us collectively, it would be a better option for us. you just cannot get a teenager in many cases to do what you need them to do or what they need to do for themselves. you have to get them there. you have -- they have to be willing to participate, you cannot force them. your thank you for sharing experiences. let's look at some cdc information about young adults and children who suffer from mental illness. host: tamm, hendersonville, n.c., independent caller. and have am a veteran been associated with several of the veterans programs offered to veterans to handle these types of entities. there is a lot going on, i think, and the issues that most prevalent at the moment, the oppression, we have been waiting for over a year for your case to be reviewed and you get no help in between. those are the issues i see. as far as the general population, i do believe that this starts are in an early childhood. i think a lot of it is caused not so much by child drug use but some of it is caused by adults who are taking drugs during pregnancy. the president's budget for fiscal year 2013 calls for mental health treatment funding. this was for veterans and active-duty service members. they include steps, like further improving the delivery of mental health care by providing enhanced access and staffing. it also provided specialized screening to identify those with some tons of depression, pst, or problems with alcohol or military sexual trauma if they have experience that and need help recovering. president obama spoke at the mental health panel yesterday, a daylong conference at the white house, about the stigma that can be associated with mental unless. let's listen. [video clip] part asrain is a body well. there is no shame i am looking for help or seeking treatment for illnesses that help the people that we love. to many americans who struggled with mental health illnesses are still suffering in silence rather than seeking mental- health. we need to reach out to these men and women who would never hesitate to see the doctor if they had a broken arm or the flu, if they had that same attitude when it came to their mental health. post" sayswashington that the president's remarks came during the mental health conference, bringing together a elected officials and others." host: tony, fort worth, texas, democrat. caller, how are you this morning? host: find. caller: i think the programs are adequate, but the problem is getting people to the programs. those kids in connecticut? was mentallyt he ill. the man that shot those people in colorado, they knew he was mentally ill. i think the president, and i am a democrat who voted for him twice, but the president is biting off too much. he is trying to cure the ills of the world and no president has ever done that, you know? sure, it is a tragedy. sure, it is important, but you cannot cure everything. every time something is on the news they come up with a program to fix it and it is an impossibility, especially with the congress he is working with. nothing will be done with mental health or gun control because none of them will do anything. host: this comment on twitter -- host: linda, philadelphia, democratic line. how are you? what do you think about this topic? bipolarhe has schizophrenia. he has had problems since he was in school. they would keep him for nine days, evaluate him, put him on medication and let him go. now they take one day and then release him. a cap on the have medicare. lifetime that he can go in. he has already been away at least 20 times. sometimes a the six days and they do not want to pay. eight days. he needs long term and he needs to be re-evaluated. it has taken months. they say that he is too high level of care. i have made 200, 300 phone calls. politicians, governors, i call everywhere. i really think they have to look at the mental illness. it starts when they're very young and have issues and the older that they get, though less help that they get, what happens is now he has drug and alcohol issues. not only are we dealing with mental health, but it is drug and alcohol now. host: with your solution be? -- what would your solution be? caller: mental illness, they need to keep them in the long term. five or six days is not long enough. they need the cap that they can get the help for. toy need more people advocate more, so that they are not constantly going back into the hospital. my son is a person that stays on madison and stops it because he does not have anyone to check on him. he is 32. i cannot do it and say take your medicine, take your medicine. why there are so many tragedies with these young children. the teachers say it, but the parents do not take them up and say there is nothing wrong with them and then something happens. you,a final question for given your personal perspective on this, who should pay for that treatment? the state? insurance companies? caller: i think the state should pay for it. they are paying for methadone to keep people out of jail? that is not true, they have clinics going on here, they are paying for that. it is supposed to keep them out of jail. they got in there giving it to them. i am going to say that we have over 75 methadone clinics? do not pay for that. they are making the kids junkies. a lot of them are mentally ill. cut that out, use that money. host: linda, that -- thank you. this from twitter -- the fiscal look at year 2014 budget, president obama is calling for $1 billion for mental health programs and $460 million to go to community mental health services. we also see $3.8 billion that would go to health centers, including affordable care act funding. riga, ohio, you are next. caller: i am a family doctor here and i do a drug program here as part of chronic disease continue on. a lot of people here have stress with breakdowns of mental- health. it is not a some are mentally healthy, some are mentally sick kind of thing. 80% of people in a lifetime have a mental health problem. to the caller who thinks our mental health programs are adequate, i have now been driven to bring you dangerously mentally ill people to go home with me. been denied care in our local area despite the fact that she had seen the mafia coming after her. she was actively delusional. the woman was in heart failure from running so hard to get away from these people. she was a danger to herself and others. she thought that the elderly man upstairs was a mafia so. i could not get her admitted. i had to put her up at my house for two days and go to the emergency room with her to get her admitted. host: why would they not admit her? caller: emergency rooms are just a big block against anyone with any kind of social security or government issued health care, i guess. i cannot imagine. we are also seeing this delusional belief that as long as you have one board certified servency room physician -- supervising nurse practitioners and students that that qualifies your emergency room to have board certified physicians. there was an emergency room here that did that kind of approach and paid their ceo $1 million per year. i am known to be outspoken and speak it as i see it. i have been told you cannot order a cants that -- cat scans because doctors ordered to many and we will lose our bonuses. this was not obama care. this is the way it is -- one of the recent doctors around here called it mangle care. i call it mismanaged care. in order to get prescriptions for several people who are going to fall off the wagon if they do not get their prescriptions for if i psychiatric medicine, do not take time to sit down on theseone for two hours, people under these mismanaged care systems will not get their site madd's for days unless they pay for them, which they cannot do. this is not working. the psychiatrists are so overwhelmed. they see people for five minutes, over medicate them so that they will not be a danger and they will not get sued. if anyone thinks that this is what we need, that this is adequate care, i am sorry. i think that ohio is better than surrounding states when it comes to mental health. host: let's look at a map of the prevalence of depression amongst adults 18 or older. you can see in this map the darker areas that have been more prevalent problem with depression, lighter areas, there is actually no data in those lighter areas, bearing better, depression-wise. talking about americans who have an issue with mental illness over the course of their lifetimes. one-quarter of all adults have a mental illness, 50% will develop at least one mental illness. those are numbers from hhs. here we can see that any mental illness among adults over the last year, by age or gender, among 20%, the 18 to 25-year-old age bracket, nearly 30% met with mental illness in the past year with a decline as age rises, 26 to 49-year-old's. you and see that those with any sort of mental and this over the past year, women are higher. men at 16%. new york.yde park, democratic line. caller: good morning. hello, c-span. longtime listener, longtime watcher. host: your question this is your comment this morning? caller: i have worked with clients in the mental-health field who have a mental health diagnosis. they tend to lack the confidence. people stigmatize, like the president said. you take care of a broken leg but with a mental illness you hesitate to go in. you do not want your co-workers or friends to know. have to stay to try to get help. host: what would you do to change that? caller: need to normalize how we do services. the national mental health conference in the havingre/dc area will be local congressman visiting to advocate for more services and more recognition of folks out there with mental health diagnosis. host: we saw president obama speech yesterday, as you mentioned he stood -- he spoke problems mental health needing to be acknowledged. what does this daylong event mean to you? caller: the government is recognizing this problem. soldiers returning home, looking for services and help, they do not want to be stigmatized but they recognize that they need assistance. they just want to be welcomed home and want to get the services to make this feel healthy. wellness is the first thing, you try to identify that before you go into those kinds of incidents. host: we heard from a former member of congress, patrick kennedy, yesterday, who talked about the importance of insurance companies and their role of dealing with mental illness. let's take a listen. [video clip] >> what will be essential is the public disclosure so that we know when health insurance companies are making those decisions. the president so eloquently said, treating it like you would treat a heart if there was a heart attack or cancer of someone who had cancer. that is the operative thing, equal treatment with disclosure. companies will do all of this runaround unless they know that someone is looking at them. host: former member of congress, patrick kennedy, talking about disclosure and the role of insurance companies on the issue of mental illness. our next caller is rick, san diego, independent line. caller: good morning. host: morning. caller: i watched your coverage on the conference for mental illness and it really inspired me to take part in a local program here. i am going to go down to my local v.a. and volunteer for the wounded warrior brothers. host: what do you hope to achieve by that? loser: well, i hope not to another one. a friend of mine that i served with in the navy was over- medicated and in full view of the naval hospital he wandered on to the interstate 5 freeway and died of blunt force trauma from the cars, the oncoming traffic. they just ran over and. host: i am so sorry to hear that. as you look at the mental health programs out there, do you view them as adequate? caller: they are not adequate, that is why it is up to us as fellow veterans to step up. you know, to be there for them. host: thank you for your call. anita, new jersey, democratic line. i actually work in the field of mental health. that one of the greatest barriers in society is the mental health model, individuals are under huge umbrellas of different experiences, and they are in a box. our society can move to a model seeellness that does not this and integrate that in an early way starting in childhood, starting in a school community with many of the people who fit into boxes. the percentage of people receiving support will deteriorated rapidly in isolation. if a person intervened in an early way and attention was not brought, we all have learning needs regarding coping with stress and being able to express and identify, label our emotions, interacting with people in ways that are pro- social. i know that that is a tall order, and we believe professionals are doing a decent job in asking these questions, but it is a huge problem and i feel like the solution is standing in the way of that problem because of a person is identified as having a problem or something wrong with them, then they are not going to seek out services. that earlier we learned according to health and chirp -- health and human services, one- quarter of all americans have a mental illness. anita brought up the difference between a mental illness and a serious mental illness. here we see different statistics. and adults, 5%. those in the 18 to 25 year-old age bracket, 7.5%. it goes down from 26, older than 50, 30%. more women than men. the percentage of women with a serious mental illness in the past year, men are 3.4%. dallas, texas, independent line. caller: i think that the statistics that you just read about males, 18 to 24, gunmen, that is very striking. the common thread with all of these large shooting incidence'' been issuesar have of mental illness among men in the age groups. host: we saw members of congress speak out about this same issue. yesterday it was part of the white house summit. what will your solutions be? -- would your solutions be? caller, i am not a psychologist or expert. host: do you see that programs are adequate in some ways, adequate in others? caller: the issues that were raised earlier about wounded what bridget wounded warriors, and what happens when they return home, the other place to see this is these mass shootings and people falling through the cracks. we have a mental health problem in this country and we are not doing -- dealing with it in the appropriate way. what is the appropriate way? that is for people smarter than me. host: kathleen sebelius spoke yesterday at the conference. she talked about a recent survey about what other americans think about mental health. [video clip] >> here is what the recent public attitude survey shows. 38% of americans say they are unwilling to be friends with someone having mental health difficulties. have a unwilling to person with schizophrenia as a close co-worker. 58% said they are unwilling to have a person with depression marry into their families. i can guarantee you that some of that is because they have no idea that the person sitting next to them or across the hall, the neighbor or their friends, they think they know what this looks like and they do not. that is part of what we are talking about trying to change. host: if you would like to see more about his mental health conference, you can go to our video library. yesterday's proceedings at the white house are archived there. let's look at some other stories in the news. at the top of the show we mentioned, the flags at the capitol at half staff to honor senator frank lavin byrd, the oldest u.s. senator presently serving, he died yesterday. host: you can see some stories in other newspapers. this headline "partisan fight." host: we also see some speculation about who might take his place. the washington times" says one of the options is tom king jr., son of a former governor." we will see more speculation in the coming days about who will take that seat. "the new york times" declares this as placing "chris christie in a difficult spot." another front page story from "usa today," "who killed financial reform"? court, at the supreme they are coming out with their decisions over the next few weeks as they wrap up their term in june. law-enforcement civil liberties advocates are discussing a ruling that came down yesterday letting police collected dna from people arrested for serious , helping to solve cold cases at the risk of civil liberties. host: we saw that covered in other newspapers, including "the baltimore sun." this comes from a maryland case. stories,ouple of other soldier motives scrutinized in the wikileaks case. "bradley manning went on trial yesterday it under charges that he aided the enemy by transferring classified documents to a website on public display." international news, "increasing in thety on both sides syrian conflict." host: as we prepare to see president obama meet with the president of china next week, this deadly fire on the front page story of "the washington journal." "industrial accident in china claim more than 70,000 lives each year." we are also watching the hill this -- today. it will be taking up irs spending on employee conferences. you can find out more about it behind on our website and we will be talking about it with our guests later this morning. we are talking about mental health programs and whether they are adequate. martin? caller: in junior high school and high-school, health was a required subject. it still is. alcohol and drugs were always discussed, but mental health never was. i think it should be brought into the health subjects that is required in high-school to make people at a younger age more aware of the needs of their family members. cisco,owrie, seven california, independent. , i am: disabled in surprised at how little outreach there is from the program that i was sent in the mail. your mental health is at risk. you do not have services usually avai