MISSOURI WATCH: STATE'S CHILDREN ARE AT RISK...RIGHT NOW

Missourians have thus far escaped one phase of an increasing national trend of armed violence by young children against their peers and society in general. The scenes of teen-age boys charged with mass murders, the bodies of their innocent victims and the mass hysteria on high school and even grade school campuses have become a part of the ritual of violence now being experienced in isolated communities across America.

It is a highly disturbing picture, one that threatens the very fabric of American family life, and its web has now extended to two states surrounding ours, thus providing an ominous warning to Missourians. Juvenile killings and school incidents have heretofore been seen as a result of urban slum poverty, but the incidence of angry adolescent aggression in middle-class, nuclear families dissolves that myopia.

Children have long killed children in our country, although we have overlooked its multiple ramifications until recently. The peak was the 1992-93 school year, when nearly 50 people were killed in school related violence. But most of those killings were in urban schools. What is different now is that the shootings are largely rural, have multiple victims and seem to offer little or no logic as to their cause; many of the victims have been random targets.

There are some common denominators in this year's school yard tragedies, and they are worth noting because they let society understand something about those who perpetrate them. These commonalities include:

-- Each case involved a child who felt inferior or picked on, with a grudge against some student or teacher or both.

~-- The killers were able to acquire high-powered guns, and in many cases their parents helped the children get them, either directly or indirectly.

-- Each of the attackers seemed to have been obsessed by violent pop culture, including movies, violent music, television or video games.

-- The killers gave ample warning signs, often in detailed writings at school.

Parents of the young killers place blame on the prevalence of guns, the influence of junk culture and children stressed to a snapping point. They also look at themselves, their broken marriages, stressful lives and lack of home life.

There have been 221 deaths at U.S. schools over the last six years, but no one seems to be able to offer a rational prediction of whether this year was simply an aberration or the start of a continuing pattern that threatens to resume when classes begin this fall.

One fact is certain: the status of children in Missouri in a wide variety of fields, ranging from family stability to available mental health services, is not good. Our state has 1.5 million residents ages 1 through 18, and according to a recent study by the nationally recognized Casey Foundation, we rank 31st among the 50 states in categories that evaluate health, safety, family security and psychiatric services, and since the state ranks 15th in adolescent population, we seem to be offering our children only half a loaf of quality living.

If the recent Casey Foundation report wasn't disappointing enough, there's this assessment from the non-profit Citizens for Missouri's Children, which serves as an independent advocate for children on programs, policies and governmental services. Its report notes that 1 in 5 Missouri children live in poverty, 1 in 10 is born by a single teen mother, 1 in 4 students drop out before finishing high school and that 1 teen dies violently every 36 hours.

If Missourians need still more evidence, there's the report of the National Institute of Mental Health that says more than 1.5 million children under age 15 are seriously depressed. A psychiatrist, Dr. Alan Unis, of the University of Washington, states, "One of the things we're seeing in the population at large is that all the mood disorders are happening earlier and earlier. The incidence of depression and suicide has gone way up among young people."

Most of the attackers in this year's school-killing cases had shown signs of clinical depression or other psychological problems. But schools, virtually all of them lacking mental health counselors, are less likely to pick up on such behavior or to have any available help at all.

The Casey Foundation discovered in its study of Missouri's children that we rank 48th nationally in the highly important violent-teen-death-prevention category, and that our teen population appears to be engaging in dangerous behaviors at a rate much greater than the norm in such areas as automobile safety, weapon use and tobacco use. Furthermore, the study reports that 39 percent of Missouri's teens are currently sexually active, and a shocking 9 percent had attempted suicide during the past 12 months.

How much of a warning does Missouri need? Every study quoted above contains a warning to society that our children, in alarming numbers, are leading at-risk lives that can quickly turn disastrous for themselves and those around them.

This is not a dilemma that lends itself to easy solutions, but it would seem that it is a problem deserving far more attention and much more intensive study than it has received in the past or is receiving today. Missouri obviously has trouble spots within its most precious population segment, and these problems stem from inadequate parenting, community disinterest, an absence of adequate mental health services and a glaring lack of public knowledge about the dangers that face us as citizens and as a state.

Every analysis makes clear one obvious conclusion: Missouri's children are at risk. What are we doing about it?

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.