Ticking the Wrong Boxes

Why parents should be wary of mandatory school mental health surveys

Last week, the state of Illinois made history by becoming the first in America to mandate annual mental-health screenings for all public school students from third grade through twelfth. The governor hailed it as a win for child wellbeing. In his words, schools should be places where students feel “empowered to ask for help.”

But children aren’t being empowered to ask for help - they’re being compelled to submit to invasive surveys that probe them for signs of depression, trauma, or suicidality. And when it comes to kids, asking the wrong questions can be profoundly dangerous.

As a child psychologist, I am struck by how little the architects of these policies seem to understand about child development. Children are not mini adults. They are suggestible, still forming their identities, and highly responsive to adult cues. Put simply: the act of asking a child if they are suicidal, depressed, or traumatised can plant those very ideas in their mind.

The problem of suggestibility

Developmental psychology has long recognised children’s vulnerability to suggestion. It is why, in courts, we treat the testimony of children with extreme caution. It is why clinicians treating anorexia prevent patients from socialising unsupervised: symptoms spread like wildfire once they are named.

The same holds true in schools. Introduce “gender dysphoria” to a group of thirteen-year-old girls and suddenly several decide they were “born in the wrong body.” Talk about “test anxiety” or “social phobia” in a classroom and students who had never considered those categories begin to wonder if they, too, “have it.”

Consider the questions that form part of this screening protocol in the United States, intended to be asked in private, without a parent present, to children as young as eight:

1. In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?

2. In the past few weeks, have you felt that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?

3. In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself?

4. Have you ever tried to kill yourself? If yes, how? When?

5. Are you thinking of killing yourself right now? If yes, please describe.

Now pause and imagine your Year 3 child being asked those questions by a nurse or school counsellor. Even a resilient child will stop and wonder: Should I be?

This is the problem of suggestion in its starkest form. Ideas planted by authority figures don’t just vanish from young minds - they take root.

False positives, real consequences

The defenders of school-wide mental health screening will say: better to be safe than sorry. Isn’t it worth asking the hard questions, just in case? The trouble is that statistically, screening the general population for rare conditions produces far more false positives than accurate identifications.

Consider suicidality. Thankfully, the actual prevalence among adolescents is relatively low. But once you administer a screener to hundreds of thousands of students, even the most carefully designed test will generate an avalanche of false positives- studies suggest upwards of 90 per cent. That’s thousands of kids mistakenly flagged, their families suddenly panicked, and a school system scrambling to intervene where no intervention is needed.

False positives are not benign. Being told you “screened positive” for depression or suicide risk is not a neutral experience for a child. It changes the way they see themselves. It often sets in motion a cascade of therapy referrals, psychiatric assessments, and medication prescriptions.

I have worked with young people who came to see their diagnosis as both curse and identity - something they alternately resented and embraced, but never fully escaped.

Meanwhile, the children who are genuinely in crisis are hardly better served by this shotgun approach. When the system drowns in false alarms, resources are diverted away from those who actually need urgent help.

The medicalisation of adolescence

Another overlooked reality: adolescence is, by definition, a turbulent stage of life. Periods of sadness, anxiety, moodiness, and conflict are not evidence of mental disorder. They are part of growing up.

By pathologising these ordinary experiences, we rob young people of something essential: the understanding that they can weather storms and emerge stronger. We send the opposite message, that every setback is a symptom, every hardship a disorder, and that professional help is the only solution.

This is not empowerment. It is dependency.

And it helps explain why, despite a dramatic expansion of mental health services over the past two decades, rates of adolescent distress have not fallen, they have soared. More diagnoses, more therapy, more medication have not delivered a mentally healthier generation.

What kids really need

If the goal is to improve children’s mental health, there are far more effective interventions than annual surveys. Children thrive when they are given independence, responsibility, and opportunities to grow beyond themselves. What protects against despair is not a diagnosis, but connection - family, friends, mentors. It’s time outdoors, in sport, in art and music. It’s less screen time, more recess, higher expectations, and the chance to face real challenges and succeed.

In short, what children need are not more mental health labels. They need stronger foundations for resilience.

The Australian context

For now, Australia has not gone as far as Illinois. But we are hardly immune and I think well on our way to following suit. Our schools already roll out “wellbeing programs” that encourage children as young as six to identify themselves as anxious or traumatised. Our professional bodies push relentlessly for earlier detection, earlier intervention, earlier labelling—despite scant evidence that any of it improves outcomes.

Parents should pay close attention. When your child is handed a survey at school, it is rarely as harmless as it looks. Those boxes ticked in pencil can harden into life-altering identities.

A final word

The instinct to help children who are struggling is noble. No one disputes that. But mandatory mental health screening in schools mistakes compulsion for care and turns ordinary childhood into pathology.

We should be very careful about the questions we put into young minds, because once planted, the answers may follow for a lifetime.

Clare Rowe is a Sydney based child & adolescent psychologist and the host of the podcast “On The Couch with Clare”. If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing for more free content.

Further Reading:

Miller, D. N., & Eckert, T. L. (2009). Youth suicidal behavior: An introduction and overview. School Psychology Review, 38(2), 153–167.

Christakis, D. A., & Fowler, J. H. (2013). Social contagion theory: Examining dynamic social networks and human behavior. Statistics in Medicine, 32(4), 556–577.

Frances, A. (2013). Saving normal: An insider’s revolt against out-of-control psychiatric diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the medicalization of ordinary life. New York: HarperCollins.