This documentary examines the crisis in mental health care for children and adolescents at risk. With unprecedented access to families, to the courts, and to psychiatric and correctional institutions, the filmmakers (Ellen Spiro and Karen Bernstein) followed several families to document the tragic results of the decline in the availability of appropriate mental health services for young people. From everyday family and developmental stresses to severe, clinical mental illness, these families struggle to get the supports they need, but there is very little help available to them.