Ads About Kids’ Mental Health Problems Draw Fire

The WSJ Health Blog points to a current controversy over an advertisement looking at the need for mental health services for children.

It seems that somebody in NY did something rather offensive:

New York University’s Child Study Center wanted a provocative new campaign to raise awareness about childhood mental health disorders. Well, it got one, and now NYU’s learning that there’s a fine line between attention-grabbing and offensive.

The center’s new ad campaign, which began last week, uses images of ransom notes to drive home the message that 12 million children are being held hostage by mental health problems, such as depression and autism.

But almost immediately, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, an advocacy group for people with autism-spectrum disorders, took offense to the ads, calling them stigmatizing and inaccurate. The autism note, for instance, implies that children with autism have no social skills and are doomed to social isolation, Ari Ne’eman, ASAN president, tels the Health Blog. “It’s not only not true, it’s a slap in the face to many people with disability,” he says.

On Tuesday, the group sent the NYU center and the campaign’s ad agency, BBDO New York, a letter of complaint signed by 13 local and national advocacy organizations. More groups came forward yesterday to join in the effort after hearing about it, Ne’eman said.

[...]

NYU has no plans to stop the campaign.

This kind of fear mongering to promote the use of psychiatric services is offensive in the extreme. One can imagine the outrage if a similar ad was run for a political campaign or some commercial product, like an automobile.