For Immediate Release:
Tuesday, March 23, 2010

WASHINGTON – Laurie Flynn, executive director of the TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups at Columbia University, testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on Thursday, March 25 in Washington, D.C.

Flynn discussed the urgent need for mental health screening in Indian Country and how mental health checkups can identify adolescents at risk for mental illness or suicide and help to link them with care.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, called the oversight hearing to discuss the rising rate of youth suicides in states with large Indian populations and the urgent need for additional mental health care resources.

“There are effective and efficient ways to improve the early identification and treatment of mental illness and reduce needless deaths by suicide,” Flynn’s testimony stated. “Mental health screening can identify youth at risk and provide intervention early, when it can be most effective. Indian populations face specific challenges, but there are evidence-based resources that can help. We can do more to help these vulnerable young people.”

TeenScreen mental health checkup programs have been active in Indian Country since 2002. TeenScreen has worked with schools and communities to offer screening in Sacaton, Ariz., Anadarko, Okla. and Las Cruces, N.M. as well as in other Indian communities.

The need for additional services is still great as evidenced by continuing reports of increasing numbers of suicides in Native American communities. From 1999 to 2004, American Indian and Alaska Native males in the 15- to 24-year-old age group had the nation’s highest suicide rate, 27.99 per 100,000 compared to other males of the same age (17.54 for white male teens, 12.80 for black teens, 8.96 for Asian/Pacific Islanders).

The TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups at Columbia University’s mission is to expand and improve early detection of mental illness by mainstreaming mental health checkups as a routine procedure in adolescent health care, schools and other youth-serving settings. The National Center offers youth mental health checkups through two major national efforts, TeenScreen Primary Care and TeenScreen Schools and Communities. Voluntary screening is provided in more than 900 sites in 43 states through the National Center’s efforts. The National Center is an affiliate of the Columbia University Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: www.teenscreen.org.

To view a webcast of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Oversight Hearing on The Preventable Epidemic: Youth Suicides and the Urgent Need for Mental Health Care Resources in Indian Country, please click here.

Witness testimony is available by clicking the following links:

MR. RANDY GRINNELL, Deputy Director, Indian Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville, Maryland

COLORADAS MANGAS, Sophomore at Ruidoso High School, Mescalero Apache Reservation, New Mexico

DR. PAULA CLAYTON, M.D., Medical Director, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, New York, New York

MS. LAURIE FLYNN, Executive Director, TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups at Columbia University, New York, New York

MR. HUNTER GENIA, Behavioral Health Administrator, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan

MS. NOVALENE GOKLISH, Senior Research Coordinator, Celebrating Life Youth Suicide Prevention Program, White Mountain Apache Tribe/Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, Celebrating Life/Johns Hopkins Project, Whiteriver, Arizona

For more information:
Pat Garrison
GarrisP@childpsych.columbia.edu
1-212-265-4453