It is a good day for the therapists of Illinois. Less so for the children of the state.
Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a “children’s behavioral health” bill into law July 31. The legislation mandates “universal mental health screening in Illinois schools by the 2027-28 school year,” according to Pritzker’s press release. Children in third to 12th grade must be screened at least once a year by that date.
The screenings will be self-assessed, WWTW reports, citing Dana Weiner, chief officer for the Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative (CBHTI). Parents may opt their children out of the program, Weiner says, according to WWTW.
Journalist Abigail Shrier, author of several books on child psychology and health, was quick to denounce the bill.
“I want to be on-the-record and crystal clear. This is a disastrous policy that will do vastly more harm than good,” she predicts in an X post.
“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.”
This terrible law will be used to ask every child attending a public school pseudoscientific questions about their “gender identity” that’s going to confuse a lot of otherwise normal children and flag them to visit with a “gender specialist.” https://t.co/c15wyJ9RV0
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) August 7, 2025
At best, self-assessments tell you what a respondent believes to be true. At worst, self-assessments tell you what a respondent thinks you want to hear. Or what their peers want to hear.
Consider rapid-onset gender dysphoria, a term coined by Lisa Littman in 2017. Littman noticed parents increasingly “reporting their children experiencing a rapid onset of gender dysphoria appearing for the first time during or after puberty … in the context of being part of a peer group where one, multiple, or even all friends have developed gender dysphoria and come out as transgender during the same timeframe and/or an increase in social media/internet use.” (RELATED: Child Star Breaks Free Of Left-Wing Social Contagion)
It’s all too likely that Pritzker’s screenings would funnel children suffering from such delusions into so-called “gender affirming care.” This might range from insisting on new pronouns to injecting cross-sex hormones to undergoing irreversible self-mutilating surgeries.
A directory from Illinois’ Carle Health notes that while “youth under the age of 18 require parental consent for [gender-affirming hormone therapy] and puberty blockers,” by Illinois law, “minors age 12 and older have the right to keep their discussions with healthcare providers confidential.”
Pritzker touted his support for mental illness of the transgender variety by declaring March 31 as “Transgender Day of Visibility.” The governor also signed the Patient and Provider Protection Act into law in January 2023, reinforcing access to “gender affirming care” and abortion. The act additionally shields patients and physicians from certain litigation.
Democratic Illinois Rep. Anne Stava-Murray proposed amending the state’s definition of “abused child” to include those children denied “abortion services, or gender-affirming services.” As of January 2025, the bill appears dead. The sentiment among transgender advocates, one imagines, is alive and well. (RELATED: Democrats’ Favorite Tranny Admits Party Went Completely Overboard On LGBTQ Bullying)
Proponents of Pritzker’s screening bill claim it will help identify and support students struggling with various disorders.
“Too often, we only recognize a student’s distress when it becomes a crisis,” said State Superintendent of Education Dr. Tony Sanders, according to a press release. “With universal screening, we shift from reaction to prevention. The earlier we identify a need, the better support we can provide to that student to help them thrive – in school and in life.”
Some people suffer from debilitating disorders that would benefit from early detection. If your kid is killing small animals and wetting the bed, take heed. And don’t leave him around sharp objects.
But the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is nearly 1000 pages in length. One chapter is simply titled, “Other Mental Disorders.”
In other words, give me a patient, and I’ll give you an illness or three.
Can we please get the mental health garbage out of public schools? We once focused on education in public schools. When we did that, students were far more proficient in reading and writing and far less anxious and depressed. https://t.co/FrXN95ISRd
— AConcernedParent (@AConcernedPare2) August 5, 2025
What was formerly “just a shy kid” is now a “patient with symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and emerging Antisocial Personality Disorder.” Shyness can and should be overcome. Generalized Anxiety Disorder suggests a pathological disturbance which might even necessitate psychotropic medication.
Such a diagnosis also offers a child an identity.
Children like clarity. They spend a great deal of their developmental years figuring out who they are in relation to what everything else is. It’s all too tempting for a child to construct a malformed self around a mental health diagnosis.
This tendency is probably responsible for part of the uptick in depression and anxiety among Gen Z. There’s social media usage and isolation and all the other stuff, too. But there’s great virtue or at least sympathy associated with being “neurodivergent.” Excellence and good health warrant no additional attention or praise. They might even be symptoms of excess privilege. With that incentive structure, it’s little surprise a child might want to be sick.
Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC
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