Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is bragging about a new law he just signed making his state the first to mandate annual mental health screening for every student starting in third grade. Unlicensed people will now be required, by law, to screen asymptomatic children every year. And what happens with the data and information they collect? Nobody knows.
To many, this new mandate will seem like a positive development. They, like the governor, will call it “empowering.” Some will probably call it “lifesaving.” Don’t believe them. This is unethical and wrong. It’s not empowering to be forced to take a school-administered mental health screening every year starting in third grade. On the contrary, it puts kids at great risk. We’ve seen over and over the sort of scenario in which a a kid who is, say, tired and grumpy after a late night at hockey practice gets labeled “suicidal” by some clueless person who is champing at the bit to project pathologies onto students.
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