Today I want to touch on a topic that I think could be very helpful in the future of mental illness prevention. It is fairly straightforward, and on paper seems like a fairly simple thing to do. I am talking about mental health screening for children.
When I think about screenings, I remember some of what I experienced as a child. I know we had vision screenings and hearing screenings at school, and I think we had some screenings and vaccines done in different health care settings. The primary goal was to prevent or catch a problem early on and do something about it before it became a bigger problem, and I assume these still happen today. But, all of the screenings that I have mentioned had to do with physical health – what if there were screenings for mental health?
As it turns out, mental health screening for children is possible. I do not know if and where it is currently available, but in the state I live in they are recommending universal mental health screenings from birth to at least age 18. Not all of the details have been worked out yet, but overall the intent is to screen all children. To be honest, until I heard about this I had never thought about universal mental health screening for children, but now I am a big fan of this idea. Why not screen all children and possibly prevent or catch problems early on? I think it sounds like a great idea.
What do you think? Should all children be screened for mental illness? How do you think it should be done? My hope is that this will one day become standard for all children all over the world, and I look forward to seeing this become a part of the care that all children deserve.