Mental Health Screening for Young Children
Last Sunday's Boston Globe ran a letter to the editor expressing concerns over young children being screened for mental health concerns. This letter (the second of two hosted on this page) showed that there has still not been enough public education about exactly what such screening entails and the benefits that can come from it. Mental health screening for young children simply seeks to ensure that a child's social and emotional development is progressing normally, and that no underlying difficulties in these areas are preventing that child from happy and healthy learning and growth.
If a problem is detected, prescription drugs are rarely on the horizon. Most difficulties are addressed through therapies that assist the child in communicating wants/needs, modifying the child's environment to maximize his/her ability to explore and learn, and working with caregivers to find more effective ways to positively redirect behaviors. The point is to help the child and caregivers become better equipped to interact with each other and the greater world, not to prescribe medication as a cure all. Do some children have severe mental health needs that warrant medical intervention? Certainly. But treatment with medication is not where the majority of children identified in screening are headed.
The author's letter incorrectly claims that he himself would be a "walking medicine chest" had such screening been in place when he was a child, since he (like all of us) went through the normal behaviors of separation anxiety from a parent, testing the limits as an adolescent, and getting his heart broken in a high school romance. No, he would not have "flunked" screenings for those reasons. Screening tools are carefully designed to pick up issues outside the realm of normal development typical for a child at the age of the screening. All of the behaviors described in his letter are in fact quite normal, and would not have raised red flags
10 years ago, mental health
10 years ago, mental health issues were treated as separate and distinct to physical health issues. I have noticed that mental health issues are now included in the range “normal” health issues a person has to cope with.
When a child enters school they are required to have a physical and immunizations. It seems to me that to require all children to have a mental health screening in addition to the physical as required by the state would be beneficial to both the young person and the school district. Often when a child has behavioral or mental issues, it goes unnoticed or untreated until they enter school and it becomes a problem for the adult supervising the child on a daily basis. A screening could get the services to the child much more quickly than if the teacher sees a problem and then goes through the steps of figuring out how to mediate the information.
I couldn't agree with Carly
I couldn't agree with Carly more. If a child's issues are not identified until a school-age teacher makes a referral for evaluation, that child is more likely to end up in the special education system. Special education is a necessary resource for countless kids, but difficulties identified and addressed in the early years can sometimes prevent a child from ever needing special education.
The real question is how do
The real question is how do we ensure that the needed services are available to all, not just to those able to afford them. Screening is the beginning; delivery of services that meshes with the diverse population of Massachusetts will be the challenge.
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