I am new here and wanted to write about something that my mom has done alot of research on. It's a program called TeenScreen. It is a mental health screening program that is in the schools and they ask you questions about you trying to find out if you have a "mental disease".
My mom read the questions to me and they had me worried. They sounded like stuff I thought all kids feel. I asked her isn't this normal and she let me know it is. But I worried cause then alot of kids, my friends included, will get to thinking this is not normal and then get to feeling they have something wrong with their brain! Here are some of the questions:
• Have you often felt very nervous or uncomfortable when you have been with a group of children or young people - say, like in the lunchroom at school or at a party?
• Have you often felt very nervous when you’ve had to do things in front of people?
• Have you often worried alot before you were going to play a sport or game or do some other activity?
• Has there been a time when you had less energy than you usually do?
• Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good-looking or as smart as other people?
• Has there been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just weren’t interested in anything?
• Have you had to count things over and over again? Or make yourself do things a certain number of times?
• Have you often felt you should check on things over and over again?
• Has there been a time when you couldn’t think as clearly or as fast as usual?
• How often did you parents get annoyed or upset with you because of the way you were feeling or acting?
• Are you Hispanic or Latino?
I don't understand the reason for that last question. It sounds like discrimination to me.
There is this girl in Indiana, Chelsea Rhoades, that was "TeenScreened" at her school in South Bend, Indiana. No one told her what it was really about and no one asked for her parents's permission to test her.
Her parents, Michael and Teresa Rhoades filed a lawsuit against the school and the place who screened Chelsea. In a news article it said this: "Chelsea, was a normal, happy and active student who gets good grades and helps mentor a girl at school. She came home from Penn High School labeled with an obsessive compulsive (She kept her room neat) and social anxiety disorder, because she had answered "yes" to a test question that asked whether she felt cut off from friends." She told her parents she felt cut off because she wasn't allowed to go out on school nights. "Her father and I don't think young children should be out every night," said Teresa Rhoades. "We limit their social occasions to keep them out of trouble."
There is a website here:
http://www.teenscreentruth.comthat gives more information about this Teen Screen stuff. And Chelsea's mom has started a petition for everyone to sign. I asked if I could sign (cause I'm only 14) and I could. So I wanted to alert other kids to sign too.
http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.htmlChelsea and her sister signed the petition and they wrote:
#3854. Lindsey Rhoades - I'm 15 years old - I ask only one thing of each adult that reads this. Help us. Save my generation. It can only be stopped by the adults. Send letters to all your congressman, senators. house Rep's demand they protect us. My parents stood up, won't you too!! Petition Mom's Daughter
#3860. Chelsea Rhoades - Teenscreen has no place in our schools or our lives. It only labels us and fills us full of self doubt. I know first hand!!!
Please join us by signing this petition and getting others to know and understand what this is all about!
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The people who came up with them are actually pretty screwed up themselves, I mean what teen has never had A TIME where they had less energy?
