Keeping with our theme of how we are failing our youth a little longer, a new report on the California Youth Authority says the state is failing to provide adequate mental health care in the juvenile penal system:

Juvenile convicts suffering mental illnesses are often over-medicated and improperly punished and cared for by inadequately trained clinicians who tend to intervene only when crisis strikes, a state-funded report on the California Youth Authority concludes.

The report, obtained by The Times on Tuesday, described a patchwork state system of care that is inconsistent from facility to facility. It cited a failure to track the effects of mind-altering drugs and an over-reliance on punishment — segregation in a wire-mesh cage, for example — for youths who need therapy instead.

The report was conducted as part of a class-action lawsuit filed by wards, as young convicts are called, alleging unconstitutional conditions within the Youth Authority, once a national model for rehabilitation of wayward juveniles. Its authors, experts on psychiatry and corrections, were jointly approved by lawyers for the wards and the state, which paid for the review.

Two teens who shared a cell hung themselves with sheets last week at the Preston Youth Correctional Facility near Sacramento.

These suicides put a human face on the tragedy of what happens when we do not pay attention to the mental health needs of incarcerated teenagers," said Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), chairwoman of an oversight committee on corrections. "The Youth Authority has a crisis in its health-care delivery, especially when it comes to meeting mental health needs."

Update: The AP has this report.

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