On May 5, 2009, the Governor of Tennessee signed into law Senate Bill 850 designed to restrict mental health screening in schools. This law went into effect July 1, 2009; it places restrictions on universal mental health testing, or psychiatric or socioemotional screening of juveniles, and requires certain consent by a juvenile’s parent, guardian, legal custodian, or caregiver before such testing can occur. The full text of this law can be found here:
http://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/106/Bill/SB0850.pdf
There are two key provisions of this new law:
1) Mental health screening [e.g. brief questionnaires designed to identify mental health problems without regard to whether there was any prior indication of a problem] is basically only permitted for a child under 16 years old if a parent or guardian has provided written, active, informed and voluntarily signed consent which may be withdrawn at any time. [There are other instances where screening may be permitted, such as a court order.]
2) A local education agency may not use the parent’s refusal to consent to administration of a psychotropic drug to a student or to a mental health screening of a student as grounds for prohibiting the child from attending class or participating in school-related activities, or as the basis of reporting the parent for child abuse or neglect. Moreover, it is unlawful to use or threaten school sanctions to coerce parental consent.
One of the screening programs used on students is TeenScreenâ„¢, the brainchild of psychiatrist Dr. David Shaffer, who admits that there is an 84 percent chance that children could be wrongly identified as suicidal or depressed.
Award winning journalist and former Congressional staff, Kelly Patricia O’Meara, in her powerful 2006 book, Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill, responded to this: “Since when does an 84 percent failure rate equate to a reliable scientific test? In other words, based on Shaffer’s study of his own test, 84 students out of 100 will be incorrectly identified as suffering from a specific mental illness. One has to wonder if parents of America are informed of this astonishing statistic as part of information to consider when having to decide whether or not to allow the mental health screening test.”
Parents consenting to mental health screening may be unaware that psychiatry is not based on physical science; i.e. psychiatrists admit they do not know the cause of or cure for any mental disorder and have no x-ray, blood or any physical test to diagnose or determine one. All screening is based on subjective opinion, using personal and invasive questions that could lead to any child being prescribed harmful mind-altering drugs.
For more information, download and read the CCHR report
Teen Screen: Life Saving Intervention, Or Orwellian Nightmare?.