Letters From: Illinois Review's Fran Eaton

April 05, 2006
Running low on funds isn't always a bad thing

Voices for Illinois Children and Ounce of Prevention want $2 million more dollars from this year's state Department of Human Services budget to screen more children (ages birth to 18 years) for mental health issues. They also want $6 million from the State Board of Education's budget to determine whether our children have social and emotional hangups.

Mind you with $8 million from you and me, more
newborns, more toddlers, more preschoolers, more children, more teens, and more young adults will be exposed to busybody psychological questionnaires. And if that's not offensive enough, Illinois law does not require parents know their children are being psychologically interrogated.

Indeed, the vast majority of parents will not know their children have been psychologically screened until they get a note from their local school recommending their child see a psychiatrist or get professional help. All this session and last, Eagle Forum of Illinois and Concerned Women for America of Illinois have been pleading with the Illinois General Assembly to force schools and public agencies to notify parents or guardians before their children are screened for mental health issues.

The bill, HB 3130, is laying dormat in the Senate Rules Committee today. Its Senate sponsor is a Democrat -- a legislator who grabbed up State Rep. Patty Bellock's HB 3130 as soon as it passed the House unanimously last spring. But Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Chicago) has decided that HB 3130 will not become law this session.

Parents will not be notified or allowed a chance to say no to their children being screened by public school staff. Children simply don't have a natural way to gauge for themselves whether questions being asked of them are inappropriate. In general, most children innocently trust adults and try to please them. Screening for mental health issues and determining a child's social and emotional development is an intimate relationship between humans -- one that can be easily misused. Misdiagnosis by well-meaning but misguided minimally-trained mental health screeners can result in undeserved lifelong stigmatizations for otherwise healthy children.

Our only hope is that the state's budget is too tight for the funds Voices and Ounce of Prevention are demanding to expand this intrusive program. In this case, running low on funds isn't always a bad thing.