Mental health screening

What would have happened in your life had you been diagnosed with mental illness earlier? I was lucky to have been diagnosed and begun treatment in my early teens, but most people don't get treatment until their 20s. So how would your life have been better?

There's a movement brewing to get mental health testing in schools. From Pete Earley's blog: "David L. Shern, Ph.D, the president and CEO of Mental Health America, made a statement that I found interesting.

Half of all people with a mental health diagnosis first experience it by age fourteen, but will not receive treatment until age twenty-four…Just as we have tests for hearing and vision, we need to have mental health check-ups with effective follow-up to reduce the prevalence and disability associated with these developmental disorders."

There's also apparently a movement against testing.

Earley also points us to a link for Mental Health First Aid.

Screening and first aid sound good on the outset, but what if it just creates more stigma? What if people start identifying mental illness everywhere? You get what you look for, you know? And teenagers are all mentally ill. It's part of the process. With kids who are obviously ill these kinds of programs can surely help them get help, but what about the ones who wobble the line of angsty teen vs bipolar? Will this start us on a path of drugging more kids? We don't even know how the meds effect adults long-term, let alone how meds effect a growing body.

You also have to worry about our litigious culture. What if a teacher identifies a student as possibly having a mental illness and the parents sue for "branding" their child? Or will these children be moved into special classrooms? What if it just creates a whole new load of stigma?

Education is better than ignorance, though, so I'm pulling for mental health screenings in schools and teacher training to identify these things. I think I would rather know something is up with my child than have it hit me out of the blue one day.