The law was signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker and will go into effect during the 2027–2028 school year.
The test, being promoted as an attempt to detect depression and suicidal inclinations in kids, is being blasted by parents and experts alike, who insist that it will bring more harm than help to youngsters.
“In the past few weeks, have you felt that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?”
“Illinois intends to crop-dust its public schools with mental health diagnoses,” wrote attorney and author Abigail Shrier.
And what a bumper crop of profits it could be.
As of 2024, there were 1,386,783 Illinois students enrolled from grades 3 through 12.
“I want to be on the record and crystal clear. This is a disastrous policy that will do vastly more harm than good,” Shrier, author of the book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, said. “Watch as tens of thousands of Illinois kids get shoved into the mental health funnel and convinced they are sick. Many or most of which will be false positives.”
“If a school nurse or a state-mandated mental health test tells you you’re sick, you’re going to believe them,” said Katherine Boyle, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, referring to what she calls the “mental health industrial complex.”
“This is why so many families are opting out of primary school completely—the overreach is astounding.”
While the Illinois State Board of Education is tasked with developing how the screening will work, a National Institute of Mental Health sample screening would ask kids questions like: “In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?” or “In the past few weeks, have you felt that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?”
Other questions are: “In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself?” or “Have you ever tried to kill yourself?” or “Are you thinking of killing yourself right now?”
Guaranteed, this will plant thoughts in kids’ minds that weren’t there before. Dangerous thoughts.
Parents have the right to opt out of this screening, but will the state inform them of this right?
“Are parents going to be told every year they can opt out? Because if they don’t, that’s really not an opt-out process,” Mailee Smith, policy attorney and parent, said. “Who is going to be collecting and reviewing this information? How will students’ confidentiality be protected? It seems to pose more risks to freedom than answers to the mental health crisis.”
How will psychiatry and Big Pharma profit? If the screening shows that the child has a “problem,” the bill “encourages schools to connect student caregivers and parents with the Behavioral Health Care and Ongoing Navigation or BEACON Portal, a tool launched in January that can provide information about available mental health resources and services,” according to ABC News.
Make that call, and just like that, your child will be dropped right into the “mental health industrial complex” and, in all likelihood, commence taking dangerous antidepressant drugs—drugs proven to cause suicide, among a host of other devastating “side effects.”
That’s why shrinks and drug peddlers love this bill—it gives them an entirely new herd of patients to ring up on their cash registers.
Illinois is the first state to mandate mental health screenings for all public school students, but with all the shrinks and drug hustlers pushing for it, does anyone believe Illinois will be the last?
Don’t bet on it. Assume that the lobbyists are already hard at work. Assume it’s the beginning of a nationwide disaster.
“Encouraging mental health screening for children is unsupported by scientific evidence and amounts to a reckless public health experiment on children,” said Duke University’s Dr. Allen Frances, himself a psychiatrist.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a mental health watchdog co-founded by the Church of Scientology, wrote: “Mental health questionnaires are based on a subjective and unscientific diagnostic system, which funnels children into a pipeline of psychiatric drugging—substances that can be addictive, damage the heart and even drive them to suicide.”
You want to screen for insanity? Start with the legislators who passed this crazy bill.
