If you’re ready for a crash course in mental health, read Alison Cuellar’s article in the new volume of Future of Children “Policies to Promote Child Health.” She introduces us to internalizing and externalizing conditions that children experience, as well as the trajectories and outcomes that can accompany them. She also describes prevention programs, and interventions from academic, juvenile justice, and medical and social service angles.

Unfortunately, well intended programs and interventions often come with an unintended consequence. Cuellar argues that due, in part, to differing funding structures of schools, health care providers, and juvenile justice programs, there is an inherent lack of integration among treatment providers; thus, children sometimes fall through the cracks. For example, health insurance might not pay for anything beyond direct professional services provided to a child; whereas parent education or family treatment might be necessary but not be covered. Another example would be programs funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration—while there might be more flexible funding available for intervention and prevention initiatives through this funder than health insurance, funding is limited to particular communities and settings; thus excluding children not found in these areas.

I’ll be frank in saying that there isn’t an easy method to defragment a complicated system of service delivery. Cuellar concludes that we need to identify ways to overcome fragmentation between services. Volume editors Currie and Reichman call on governments to follow the lead of businesses and make use of the vast amount of data available to them to “create an integrated portrait of child health or to target policies to those who have the most to gain from them.”

In a blog post last year, I wrote about how the Affordable Care Act was a step in the right direction to allow for a more integrated health care system and that there were existing initiatives, such as the patient-centered medical home model, that encourage coordination among providers. Perhaps future policies and practices will encourage coordination among mental health services, thereby improving child mental health.