In a previous post I mentioned that the state I live in is considering universal mental health screenings for children. In that post, I thought it was a great idea and I supported it. In fact, I have liked the idea so much that it never occurred to me that there would be any opposition to this, but last week I found out that was not the case. Today I want to touch on some of the arguments against universal mental health screenings for children, even though I still very much support the idea of it.
One of the concerns is the cost of these screenings, and I understand that needs to be addressed. However, I think solutions can be easily found here. Another concern is that if lots of children are screened and found to have potential mental health issues, who is going to take care of them? In other words, if we find an issue, do we have a way to address it? This also makes sense to me, but I’m not sure the answer to this is to just not try. I’d like to think that many parents would want to know if there are potential issues, and then they can take that information and decide what (if anything) to do next. Of course, this is a valid concern, but this speaks to a larger problem of a lack of services, which needs to be addressed as well.
Although I am sure there are many more objections out there, the last one I am going to touch on makes me angry. This objection is simply that parents do not want to have their children screened for mental health issues because of the stigma associated with mental illness. The very idea of universal screening is that no child is singled out in relation to their mental health. It frustrates me to think that parents would be against this type of screening, but it also indicates that we still have a long way to go when it comes to educating people about mental illness. It is not something to be feared. It is not a character flaw or the person’s fault. These are real diseases, and parents need to look at this no differently than eye or ear screenings.
As like many other issues, universal mental health screenings have become a grayer topic than I would have expected. It seemed so easy a week ago, but it has become more complicated. In the end, however, I hope universal mental health screenings become a requirement.