An ounce of prevention.

http://www.slc.edu/adult-professional/cdi/events/

If you don't have an hour and a half (who does?), just watch the 10 minutes from about 50 minutes in to the close of the first hour. Temple Grandin talks about kids with autism, but she could very well be talking about anybody, autism or no.

And/or, from 73:09, there's a piece of her answer to the question about bullying and teasing that's absolutely fascinating to me: non-teasing environments, where she had friends, arose from shared interests. She lists a number of activities that can create social bonds for kids with autism (and I would argue kids without autism, too). I thought, these are all the things that get cut first.

Socialization through shared interests: art, theater, science, cooking, building things.

How many jails do we build, how much funding do we throw at social programs, in order to care for (or worse, simply contain) the people who get squeezed out of their own productive capabilities through a lack of support early on?