Adolescent Depression:
TeenScreen pros and cons
NPR
Expert Summary
School screening test for issues like adolescent depression is debated. Provides facts and personal stories of students' experiences.
Margarita Tartakovsky
Expert Scorecard
Overall Expert Score
Community Reviews
Unfortunately, the only way one is going to find out if a teenager is at risk for suicide is to ask intrusive questions and get honest answers. If a TeenScreen program does this because it's trying to save lives, and someone makes a mistake -- which is what this report was about -- what happens is parents get upset and protest. Counselors should be more careful not to take a kid aside and ask them if they are at risk just based on a computer test. They have to combine that test with behavioral observations and be intelligent about it. Mistakes often take a TeenScreen program out of commission. I think one family's self-absorbed protest doesn't work when you're trying to find the hidden truths that lead teenagers to kill themselves, but we are a self-interested society. So add that to adult multimedia-social illiteracy and you just get another obstacle to stopping a suicide before it happens. I think we as a society have to be prepared for the teen suicide rate to go up another 200% before we'll really do anything about it.



