Many in Government Think a Child’s Mind Is a Datapoint

They don’t say it out loud.

But you can hear it in their speeches.

You can see it in the policies.

You can feel it in the services we’re asked to build.

To many in government, a child’s mind is a datapoint.

Something to be measured, triaged, plotted on a dashboard.

Distress becomes “demand.”

Waiting lists become the problem.

Outcomes become the goal.

And “good mental health” becomes whatever can be captured on a form.

But what about the adolescent who won’t speak?

The one whose compulsions don’t shift,

whose shutdowns don’t fit the intervention window,

whose grief doesn’t respond to skill-building?

These minds are not unwell in the way the system expects.

They are symbolically collapsed.

They are crying out in image, silence, repetition.

But the symbolic can’t be graphed.

So it gets ignored.

Clinicians are trained to “deliver.”

Young people are taught to “engage.”

And therapy becomes a performance of recovery—not a space for meaning.

This is not negligence.

It’s a failure of imagination at the highest levels.

We need leaders who understand that some forms of suffering are not yet speakable, let alone measurable.

We need systems that make room for what the symptom is trying to say, not just how fast it goes away.

Because a child’s mind is not a datapoint.

It is a language.

It is a structure.

It is a human being—still becoming.