A law is currently being proposed in Texas that would allow schools to identify students as mentally ill. The bill would require schools to set up “threat assessment teams” to single out students considered a suicide risk and turn them in to mental health authorities.
Leaders of at least 130 organizations are against the proposed law (allegedly designed to improve school safety), and have sent a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warning him of their concerns and requesting he veto the bill.
According to John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, who is a signatory of the letter to Abbott:
“Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be – and has been – perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation, which is the concern with these school safety laws,”1
“This program is part of a nationwide push to empower non-medically trained individuals to ‘identify,’ label and refer students for treatment who they believe may exhibit suicidal or mentally ill behavior. Worse, these threat assessments – no matter how inaccurate or subjective – could stigmatize a child for the rest of his or her life.”1
Others supporters of the letter include Texas Eagle Forum President Trayce Bradford, the Southern Baptists of Texas, Lacey Hull of We the Parents Coalition and Rachel Malone of the Gun Owners of America.
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They are opposed to the bill not only because of the potential to unfairly label children, but also because it “could be used as a Trojan Horse to allow pharmaceutical companies to push anti-psychotic drugs on children and empower schools to override parental decisions regarding the counseling and treatment of their children on issues of suicide and mental health.”1
They also believe that predicting which children may have trouble is not the appropriate way to focus on the problem, explaining:
“The idea that one could pinpoint those who will ‘potentially’ become dangerous and then get them the ‘help they need’ is abhorrent to us. No one can predict evil. Even if they could, there is nothing to suggest that mental health treatment can prevent it,”1
“Using Threat Assessment Teams to scrutinize children, question children, and offer subjective assessments of risk, without providing true information on the frailties of such assessments, and without full Miranda warnings is an affront to parental and civil rights,”1
“What defines ‘at risk’? The problem with mental screening in general and with labeling ‘at-risk’ children with a psychiatric label is that the already admittedly subjective diagnostic criteria are even more difficult to apply to children.”1
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They warn that, under the proposed bill, “mental health education” is more likely to become an idoctrination tool, a marketing tool, than it is to help children,1, writing:
“There are at least two major cases in Texas where books, coloring books, or similar materials were used to either fill hospital beds or steer children toward medication. We believe that families, their chosen communities, and their churches are charged with our children’s social, emotional, and moral education. There has been increasing controversy over schools teaching about family values, relationships, belief systems or behaviors. Transparency has also been a problem. We do not support legislation that would allow our role, our God given duty, to be undermined by the state.”1
The bill follows the aftermath of the shooting at Santa Fe High School in May 2018 that left 13 wounded and 10 people dead.
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