After googling for months as to the outcome of the following Illinois legislation I finally contacted the author who kindly directed me to these two very recent articles. Do note the preference for passive consent.

LEADER EXCLUSIVE: Indiana family sues high school over non- consensual adolescent mental health screening

Friday, June 10, 2005

 - Rhonda Robinson, special to IllinoisLeader.com http://www.illinoisleader.com/news/newsview.asp?c=26341

SPRINGFIELD-- An Indiana family may become the first test case as to the constitutionality of controversial legislation, passed in Illinois, mandating mental health screening for all school-aged children.

While Indiana has not yet passed comprehensive legislation on the order of Illinois, they have instituted functional mental health screening programs in certain areas.

At the center of this controversy is program called TeenScreen designed by Columbia University. The TeenScreen Program is an adolescent mental health and suicide-screening program recommended by President Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. The program made its debut last fall in Illinois at Brimfield High School in the Peoria area.

The Rutherford Institute, a conservative civil liberties organization, has filed a tort claim notice (which is required by Indiana law, as notice of intent to file lawsuit against a government subdivision) against Penn High School and administrators who conducted the TeenScreen program, on behalf of the Michael and Teresa Rhoades, whose 15-year old daughter, a student of Penn High School in Mishawaka, Indiana, was subjected to the TeenScreen survey in her homeroom class.

The Rhoadeses became aware of the screening only when their daughter came home and asked what was the definition of obsessive-compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder. She explained that was the diagnosis she had been given at school after the survey.

Personnel of the Madison Center for Children, a division of the community mental health center in St. Joseph County, Indiana, administered the TeenScreen mental health examination.

Neither the school nor the center had obtained the Rhoades' permission to conduct the survey on their daughter. Instead they obtained voluntary consent using an assent form, by which the minor herself gave permission to be screened.

Status of mental health screening in Illinois

During the recently passed legislative session, Illinois passed HR0654, a house resolution recommending everyone should be screened once during childhood for mental illness and suicide risk. The resolution also promoted the implementation of the controversial mental health-screening program TeenScreen.

Although the resolution states that TeenScreen has been "proven" successful, TeenScreen co-director Rob Caruano does not make that claim, Caruano told the Indiana's South Bend Tribune, "Teen suicides, while tragic, are so rare that the study would have to be impossibly huge to show a meaningful difference in mortality between screened and unscreened students...you'd have to be screening almost the whole country to reach statistical significance."

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) agrees with Caruano and found "no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality."

Based on TeenScreen statistics in 2004, 5,862 children have been screened without written parental consent across the country.

While the 10-day comment period concerning the implantation of Children's Mental Health (CMH) Plan, began Tuesday of this week, parents' growing concern are that their children will be screened without their consent and unduly labeled.

In a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, State Sen. Chris Lauzen (R-Aurora) said, "When I listened to constituents on this issue, I heard real fear in their voices . . . that their kids would be labeled; that other classmates might not want to play with them."

While the current (CMH) Plan, due on Governor Blagojevich's desk June 30th, states screening is voluntary and requires parental consent.

However, there is controversy even among school school administrators as to the definition of parental consent and whether passive or active consent is appropriate. Passive consent means that the child would be screened unless the parent objects. In other words, it is incumbent upon the parent to object rather than the responsibility of the school to seek permission.

In an email obtained by the IllinoisLeader.com between Terry Smith, an administrator at Flagler Palm Coast High School in Florida, and Jim McDonough, Director of the Florida Office of Drug Control and TeenScreen advisor, Smith states that after a meeting with the county school district, and a conference call to Columbia TeenScreen, the school is interested in screening as many as possible beginning in the 9th grade. "The passive acceptance style was mostly discussed to increase the numbers for 50% for Consent to near 95% for Passive."

Despite the efforts of family groups including Eagle Forum, Illinois Family Institute, Concerned Women of America and Family Taxpayers Network, and others to demand that written parental consent be included in the law, passive consent currently complies with Illinois law.

10 states have introduced or passed legislation that prohibits mental health screening of children in schools.

© 2005 IllinoisLeader.com -- all rights reserved

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What are your thoughts concerning the issues raised in this story? Write a letter to the editor at [email protected] and include your name and town.

Mental Health: teen screening and parental consent

6/3/2005 6:25:00 AM By Rhonda Robinson http://www.illinoisfamily.org/news/contentview.asp?c=26057  

Not too long ago, when you found a note wadded up and stuffed in the bottom of a child's book bag, it usually informed you, that you were supposed to bring cookies for the entire class...last week. Today, that paper could be a vital remnant of your parental authority--unseen, and discarded.

Cookies are the least of our problems today. The current issues schools face are well known; shootings, drugs, and educational apathy, to name a few. The simplistic problems of cookies, chewing gum in class and running in the hallway, of just a generation ago, have become almost laughable, and so far removed that we have filed them away in our distant memory along with sitcoms like Happy Days and Father Knows Best, reduced to a feel good thought far from the reality of today.

As we have become more comfortable with the new "norm" our methods and ideology in dealing with it has also changed just as dramatically.

The way children's behavior is viewed has changed over the last several years. Rather than viewing behavior as something that should be controlled, shaped and modeled by parents, the trend is now to view behavior and ideas as symptoms of an unseen disorder--a disorder in need of professional intervention.

This view is becoming entrenched in Illinois as evidenced with the passage of the "Children's Mental Health Act of 2003" which Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed into law.

The law mandates that the state of Illinois develop a Children's Mental Health Plan "containing short-term and long-term recommendations to provide comprehensive, coordinated mental health prevention, early intervention, and treatment services for children from birth through age 18."

Lawmakers didn't read bill As the preliminary plan was unveiled last year, it drew attention around the nation. Illinois lawmakers on both sides of the aisle got a good look at the monstrous bureaucracy they had just created; many admitted that they had not even read the bill, believing it was no more than a warm-fuzzy, feel-good bill with no real impact or funding.

State Rep. Patti Bellock (R-Wheaton), a co-sponsor of the original legislation and member of the Illinois Children's Mental Health Partnership (ICMHP), admitted that her responsibilities in Springfield had prevented her from attending Partnership meetings, and so she was caught by surprise at the scope and reach of the ICMHP's Preliminary Plan as set forth last summer.

Bellock said she had "serious reservations" about the way the Partnership had translated the intent of the legislation.

New mental health bureaucracy As did many parents, and industry watchers around the nation. However, the Illinois Children's Mental Health Partnership has been given unprecedented authority as it holds the "responsibility of developing and monitoring the implementation of the Children's Mental Health Plan as approved by the Governor."

"Approved by the Governor" also translates as "answers only to the Governor." Shock and dismay aside, the ICMHP plan is going forth without opposition.

Citing healthy social and emotional development as an essential underpinning to school readiness, academic success, and health, the ICMHP's "Strategic Plan for Building a Comprehensive Children's Mental Health System in Illinois" with a "phased in approach" has a vision for children's mental health that, "Starts early, beginning prenatally and at birth, and continues throughout adolescence including efforts to support adolescents in making the transition to young adulthood."

The Governor's Strategic Plan goes far beyond what any other state has attempted, and targets the mentally ill.

No. Wait. All Illinois children, that's right.

Illinois: Brave New State? Prevention, early intervention and treatment for all children, reaching into the womb with prenatal screening, birth to age 18 and youth age 19-21 through pre-natal check ups, well-baby check-ups, and school physicals.

"Prevention, early intervention and treatment." Herein is the essence of an entire movement that is emerging, with Illinois racing ahead, striving to "lead the nation" in mental health, sweeping aside parental authority, and placing our children's emotional growth to be scrutinized by state sanctioned and newly trained "workforce."

The national model for prevention and early intervention in adolescence is the Columbia University TeenScreen Program. This is being pomoted as a mental health and suicide prevention tool with the goal of offering mental health checkups to every teenager in America.

Beginning with "Demographics," TeenScreen asks if a student is male or female, about race, "who spent the most time taking care of you" and questions whether or not you have seen a dentist for a toothache.

TeenScreen's leading questions Under the heading of "Social Phobia TeenScreen", TeenScreen asks a series of questions that begin with "In the last three months...Have you:

• "often felt very nervous or uncomfortable when you have been with a group of children or young people- say, like in the lunchroom at school or at a party?"

• "often felt very nervous when you've had to do things in front of people?"

• "often worried a lot before you were going to play a sport or a game or do some other activity?"

Suicide queries and more TeenScreen asks the same type of lead-in questions about depression and even suicide:

"In the last three months ... has there:

• "been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just weren't interested in anything?"

• "been a time you had less energy than you usually do?"

• "been a time when you felt you couldn't do anything well or that your weren't as good-looking or as smart as other people?"

• "been a time when you thought seriously about killing yourself?"

Can you see the danger in this line of questioning: asking teens about suicide can plant that idea in the impressionable minds of the less stable students who might then be more likely to view it as an option.

Moreover, consider the context: the TeenScreen survey, having just stirred up students' thoughts and emotions about their inadequacies and insecurities, then proceeds to discuss, of all things, suicide.

TeenScreen also asks questions about how often students were not able to do things or go places with their family or people their own age because of the way they felt or acted.

These questions along with the entire TeenScreen carry a disclaimer as not being a diagnostic tool, but a screening tool, for prevention and early intervention. Nevertheless, answering 'yes' to the suicide question can set the wheels of the mental health bureaucracy in motion, as parents have learned in Texas.

"Early screening" nightmare: Aliah Gleason The poster child for early intervention should be 13-year-old Aliah Gleason, who is described in an article by Rob Waters in (the liberal magazine) Mother Jones as a "lively girl with a round face, a quick wit, and a sharp tongue."

While in the seventh grade, a group of psychologists from the University of Texas (UT) came to Aliah's school to conduct a mental health screening of seventh- and eighth-grade female students.

Within a few short weeks, Aliah's parents learned of the screening via the "Dear Parents" letter arriving, which reported that she was not under a "significant level of distress."

However, a phone call soon followed from a UT psychologist informing Aliah's parents that she had "scored high" for suicide and urged them to take her into an emergency clinic for evaluation. They complied.

Six weeks later, a child-protection worker came to Aliah's school, interviewed her without parental consent, and then "summoned" her father to the school.

Her father resisted the worker's request to have his daughter committed to the state mental hospital. A heated exchange ended with Aliah in a squad car, under emergency "protection" on her way to a nine-month long nightmare.

Aliah was not allowed to see or speak to her parents for five months. Her parents' consent was not needed for the hospital to put her in restraints or force to take no less than 12 different psychiatric drugs, often several at a time. For more information, check out the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection.

Indiana: parents take action Aliah is not an isolated case; similar stories are coming from our neighbors to the east in Indiana, where concerned parents resorted to taking out a newspaper ad asking parents to show up at the next school meeting to stop the "TeenScreen" survey with its suicide questions: click HERE.

Why should we not file Aliah's story in the "Oh, how sad, glad it's not me" file and forget it?

Because here in Illinois, we have a new vision for "prevention, early intervention, and treatment services for children."

While parents in Texas have just won a major battle for their rights and protection by thwarting screening and treatment measures similar to our plans, we on the other hand will have a final strategic plan on the Governor's desk June 30th.

"Passive consent"? As it stands now, if a parent does not sign an "opt-out" letter to the school, consent for screening is implied, whereby "passive consent" is given.

"Passive consent" will take all the bliss out of ignorance, and turn those wadded up school papers at the bottom of your child's book bag into one of the last shreds of your parental authority.

We must repeal the Children's Mental Health Act of 2003. Stay tuned.