{"id":128946,"date":"2025-09-02T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T10:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/?p=128946"},"modified":"2025-09-01T13:47:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T17:47:36","slug":"school-mental-health-screening-puts-parental-rights-and-children-at-risk-cchr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/school-mental-health-screening-puts-parental-rights-and-children-at-risk-cchr\/","title":{"rendered":"School Mental Health Screening Puts Parental Rights and Children at Risk says CCHR"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES, Calif., Sept. 2, 2025 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — The mental health industry watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR)<\/a> is recommending that parents shield their children from invasive mental health screening in schools. To assist families, CCHR provides a downloadable Parent\u2019s Exemption Form Prior to Mental Health and Psychological Screening or Counseling<\/em><\/a>. A growing number of states now require psychiatric screening in schools, most recently Illinois, which calls for annual screenings beginning in third grade (ages 8\u20139).<\/p>\n

\"Invasive
Image caption: Invasive mental health screenings risk false psychiatric labels, dangerous drugging, and erosion of parents\u2019 constitutional rights, while studies show no improvement in children\u2019s mental health outcomes.<\/em><\/p>\n

CCHR says mental disorder screening is a pipeline to children and even toddlers being prescribed psychotropic drugs, already given to 6.1 million 0\u201317-year-olds in the U.S.[1] It warns that this will likely increase, given the American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended mental health screening from the newborn visit through age 21 and depression and suicide screening from age 12. CCHR says parents are ill-informed that the screening questionnaires are based on a diagnostic system experts say is unreliable.<\/p>\n

Dr. Thomas Insel, former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, conceded psychiatric diagnoses \u201clack validity\u201d and are based on \u201cconsensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between 2016 and 2022, more than 221 million antidepressant prescriptions were written for adolescents (12\u201317) and young adults (18\u201325). By 2022, antidepressant use in youth had surged by 66%.[2] Antidepressants carry a black box warning of suicidal behavior in those aged 24 and younger. The Nordic Cochrane Centre found that antidepressants double the risk of aggression and suicide in youth.[3] CCHR says it is not surprising, then, that today suicide is a leading cause of death among children, teens, and young adults.<\/p>\n

Jan Eastgate, president of CCHR International, states, \u201cDespite the aggressive expansion of screening\u2014from toddlers through college-age youth\u2014the results speak for themselves: more children are being labeled, drugged, and funneled into psychiatric treatment, yet rates of suicide and poor outcomes have worsened, not improved. Screening escalates the stigmatizing and medicalization of normal childhood behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

One widely used tool is the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), created by a pharmaceutical company to help market its antidepressant. Yet psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, who helped develop the PHQ-9, conceded that psychiatric diagnoses are unreliable: \u201cTo say that we\u2019ve solved the reliability problems is just not true.\u201d[4]<\/p>\n

The PHQ-9\u2019s vague nine questions are so broad that ordinary experiences like tiredness, overeating, or difficulty concentrating can lead to a diagnosis of depression\u2014and a prescription for antidepressants.<\/p>\n

Journalist Kelly Patricia O\u2019Meara, in Still Psyched Out: And Nobody is Getting Better<\/em><\/a>, warns parents that \u201cfor the psychiatric community, confirmation of objective, confirmable abnormalities in the brain have never been a scientific standard to be met when considering what constitutes mental illness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evidence of Harm:<\/strong><\/p>\n