Mental health checkups can help parents find youth suffering in silence and those with the known risk factors for suicide. Screening has been proven to be safe and effective and can be offered to families in doctors' offices, schools, juvenile justice facilities, and other youth-serving settings. Voluntary mental health checkup programs, like the programs and initiatives of the TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups, are currently used in hundreds of communities around the country and are embraced as vital components of suicide prevention efforts.

The goal of any health screening program is to identify problems in their early stages in order to prevent more severe problems in the future. Unidentified mental illness has been shown to have detrimental effects on youths’ achievement and overall well-being and, in some cases, it is life-threatening.

The value of mental health screening programs for teenagers has been endorsed by over 30 national health, family and advocacy organizations including the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

For more information on mental health checkups:

• View a fact sheet about mental health checkups
• Review the research on mental health checkups
• Read frequently asked questions about mental health checkups
• Online depression screening increases access to care