By Erika Angulo, Producer, NBC News
In classrooms across the country, teachers are going back to school to learn how to spot symptoms of mental illness among their students.
It's all part of an effort to prevent incidents such as this week's shooting at an elementary school in Georgia, which could have ended in disaster were it not for the quick thinking of school bookkeeper Antoinette Tuff. Suspect 20-year-old Michael Brandon Hill told Tuff he was mentally unstable and had nothing to live for, but she calmed him down, and convinced him to surrender.
Mental illness also played a role in the December shooting deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Conn., and the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado 14 years ago.
Excuse me, but 29 and non attendee of the school is not even making sense, as the killer monster of the Sandy Hook massacre. These were not children who did this thing.
So what are drug companies getting out of this?
How big a deal for Insurance companies?
We cut mental health programs for parents to help but then upscale government agencies to suspect.
This just feels ALL wrong to me. If the tea party jumps on this band wagon of government intrusion, I am sorry but this would be one of those clocks stopped twice a day scenarios. I would have to agree with them on this.
Another way in the name of help to isolate a child and make them feel different or to agitate parents into putting them into some program and they may already have them in counseling. What could possibly go wrong with janitors, lunchladies, teachers and principal assessing children for what THEY suspect as mental illness? Plenty could go wrong. What happened to just plain on reading and writing and sending a sad child to the school counselor.
I don't want some armchair teacher assessing my child. I want them to teach. Another way to squelch questioning authority I suspect. We do have armed guards in school now. shoot or taze or arrest them, after all the are unstable and their parents are retarded if they are on the loony left.
I have the uttmost respect for teachers but a lot can go wrong here especially in Scott World. A lot can go wrong here PERIOD !
Among the symptoms teachers are instructed to look for: persistent sadness, irritability, withdrawal and even a major change in eating habits. Teachers in 21 states and the District of Columbia will receive a bookmark listing the warning signs to keep handy.
When a student is determined to suffer from several of the symptoms, the child's family will be contacted and the teen will be referred to a specialist.
Program organizers say the student's privacy will be protected.
"It's not like you are going to put a scarlet letter around the kid and pull them out of class and everyone is going to know this is a child with mental illness," said Steve Leifman, a judge who serves as chair of the Florida Supreme Court task force on mental health and is also an AFP member
Homeschooling is looking better every day.
The program has few critics, but some say it should not be linked to a group that receives money from pharmaceutical companies. American Psychiatric Foundation Executive Director Paul Burke says the APF retains control over all of its public education program, content and materials.
I am not saying I am against a trained already counselor observing a child that is displaying bizarre behavior but this idea is as bad as the armed guards in my opinion.
Label a child and you have a child labeled for life....
Vice President Biden is on board for this ...I am no. Not every teacher is even qualified to teach much less do a psychological exam on observation. Bring in mental health professionals ..Teachers have enough to do.
I would like to see the stats on the suicide rates on psyhiatrists. I heard it was very large.
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