Statement:

March 23, 2011

Marking the first anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, the TeenScreen National Center applauds the impact of this important legislation on adolescents and their families. A key provision is offering annual screening of adolescents for mental illness as a free preventive service. This measure helps ensure that adolescents will receive total health care, as both their physical and mental health are monitored. The impact of undiagnosed, untreated mental illness can be devastating – including damaged relationships with family and friends, school failure and dropout, involvement in the juvenile justice system, and most tragically, to thoughts or attempts of suicide. NIMH research has shown that half of all mental disorders start by age 14, making adolescence an important time to screen for mental illness. Like many physical disorders, catching mental illness in early, easier-to-treat stages has numerous advantages, including reducing suffering and disability and increasing the chance that a young person will go on to lead a fulfilled, productive life. While debate about health reform continues, there should remain no question about the benefit of this legislation to improve the early detection of mental illness in our nation’s youth.

The TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups at Columbia University is a non-profit public health initiative and national policy and resource center devoted to increasing youth access to regular mental health checkups. As a pioneering force in the early identification of mental illness in teens, TeenScreen programs have been recognized as a national model and are listed in the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices and the Best Practices Registry for Suicide Prevention. The TeenScreen National Center is affiliated with the Columbia University Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. TeenScreen is being implemented by more than 1,100 primary care providers and in nearly 600 school and community-based sites in 46 states through the TeenScreen Primary Care and TeenScreen Schools and Communities programs. To learn more about TeenScreen’s free resources and policy research, please visit www.teenscreen.org.

For more information:
Elizabeth Streich
streich@childpsych.columbia.edu
212-265-3174