“All told, at least 40 percent of adolescent admissions to private psychiatric hospitals during the 1980s were inappropriate, the Children’s Defense Fund estimated. The hospitals’ advertising campaigns were one reason. When researchers from the University of North Carolina questioned mothers of high school students about their reactions to a dozen fear-based newspaper ads for psychiatric facilities they came up with a paradoxical discovery. The ads had the greatest impact on parents of children who least needed mental health services.”
