RFK Jr. panned mental health screenings in schools. Here are 3 things to know : Shots

The Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, are generally seated one next to each other during the meetings of the cabinet of President Trump, as in him on August 26.

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The United States Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr and the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, want schools to suppress mental health and therapy screening. Instead, they support in an opinion article at the Washington Post that schools “must return to the natural sources of mental well-being: strong families, nutrition and physical form, and hope for the future”.

In OP-ED, the two secretaries mention a recent bill signed by the Governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, who forces all state schools to offer mental health screening tests, starting with third year students. Projections are standardized questionnaires that question children about their feelings and well-being.

Kennedy and McMahon apply that such screens “medicalize the unique and sometimes unpredictable behavior of young children”, creating “new stigmata that students could take with them for life. We must make American children in good health without treating them all as patients”.

NPR has spoken to mental health experts who say that OP-ED is misleading on mental health screening in schools and therapy. Here are three points which, they say, are important to know the problem.

1. Mental health screening reduces stigma, rather than creating them.

Mental health screenings open a conversation on mental health.

“They are awareness of conversation and conversation stards,” explains psychologist Mary Alvord, founder of Alvord Baker and Associates, who also works with schools from the metropolitan region of Washington, DC to improve the well-being and resilience of students.

“Stigmatization is when you don’t talk about it and hide it,” said Alvord. “And then you do this so that people don’t want to talk about it and they don’t want to face it.”

As research has shown, stigma prevents people with mental health problems from asking for help.

In addition, these school projections are supposed to be universal, explains Alvord, and they normalize conversations around mental health, sensitize and encourage the search for help.

Mental health health screening also provides an important overview of the kind of thing with which children are struggling, things that can be addressed by schools, not by sending children to therapy, but by attacking greater problems, schools may be confronted. Most schools making mental health screens on a school scale generally do not exceed a specific state of mental health.

Instead, they aim for a broader objective in the well-being and the difficulties of the students, explains Dr. Vera Feuer, director of children’s psychiatry at Northwell Health. She also works with several Long Island, NY school districts, to improve the mental health of students.

“They could be called a well-being survey or a survey on the school climate or, you know, something in this direction,” explains Feuer.

He gives schools a window on how children compete and behave, says Feuer. These projections help schools provide programs that can stimulate students’ mental health.

For example, many schools work with mental health care clinicians to provide strategies based on evidence to improve emotional resilience in children or to improve connectivity between students.

2. Screenders screen, they do not diagnose.

“”One of the things I felt was really wrong in the [op-ed] article [is] It said things like, we treat everyone like patients, “said Feuer.

Like her and other mental health experts have noted it, mental health screenings do not end with a clinical diagnosis.

“Screening is brief assessments that identify this population at risk,” said psychologist Benjamin Miller. “They are not diagnostic, and they force us to take an additional step to find out, to find more information and the most appropriate driving line.”

The next step could be for a student whose mental health symptoms are identified in the screening test to see a school advisor or a school nurse, who can do an additional assessment to understand what is happening in the student’s life and assess them for a reference to a mental health care provider.

Most students who take on screening will not need this reference, but for those who do it, it is a way to take their symptoms early so that they can connect to care before things degenerate in crisis.

“The prevalence of mental health disorders is high,” said Feuer. “Many disorders start before the age of 15. We know that rates have increased [in recent years].“”

Mental health and school health screenings help early detection symptoms, says Feuer.

And if schools have a plan in place to connect students to care, she notes, schools can also help fill the gap for access. They are not different from projections of physical health problems, notes Miller, who sits on the board of directors of inseparable, a group for defense of mental health.

“We screen all the time in schools for things like vision and hearing,” he said. “So it makes sense that we would simply continue to project things that are just as important, like our mental health.”

3. A positive screen does not always lead to a therapy appointment.

Access to mental health care remains a huge challenge for all Americans, especially children, mainly because there are simply not enough suppliers to meet demand.

And even when a child sees a therapist or a psychiatrist, this does not necessarily lead to a diagnosis of mental health.

When Feuer assesses a child, she also assesses their physical health to ensure that this is not what causes mental health symptoms.

“We often diagnose other medical conditions, including diabetes or other things that can be present,” explains Feuer. “Someone who seems to be distracted in class, falling asleep, not being engaged, may seem depressed.”

But a more in-depth examination by a doctor could reveal, for example, that the child suffered from diabetes causing these symptoms, she said. However, even in cases where a child is diagnosed with a mental health problem, it can take a long time for this child to connect to a therapist, adds Feuer.

“The biggest obstacle continues to be even when things are diagnosed, real access to care is still very, very difficult in most of the places in this country.”

Kennedy and McMahon also argued in favor of “natural sources of mental well-being”, which are well accepted by the mental health community.

Factors such as good nutrition, social interactions, sleep and family support are essential for better mental health for children, explains Feuer. “They are actually part of a really important mental health promotion plan.”

“But that’s not all,” said Alvord. “You can eat well and sleep well and have mental health challenges.”

And that is why mental health screens in regular school environment are so important, say Alvord and others. They help to have symptoms early and connect vulnerable children to care before there was a crisis.

NPR has contacted the American Ministry of Health and Social Services with an interviewer Kennedy request or another civil servant to develop plans to combat the mental health of children, but we did not receive a response to the deadline.