This article was originally posted on The Truth Fairy.
Dear Truth Fairy Reader,
I am hard at work on a new book — The Plot Against Love — about how Gen Z’s dating and mating life went so desperately off track. I have talked to many of you; I’d be thrilled to talk to more. If you’re a member of Gen Z, open to talking about your dating life without attribution, please get in touch: [email protected].
I’ll be posting more about The Plot Against Love in the coming months.
I also wanted to bring to your attention the new Illinois law that makes mental health screening mandatory in public school. Mental health screening is more insidious than it seems. I lay out some of the harms in this new piece.
If you have a child in public school, consider arming them with these words: “I am not allowed to take this survey. Please call my mother.”
Warmly,
Abigail.
Illinois intends to crop-dust its public schools with mental-health diagnoses.
Last week, Illinois governor JB Pritzker signed into law mandatory annual mental-health screenings for all public school children in third through twelfth grades. “Illinois is now the first state in the nation to require mental health screenings in its public schools,” the governor trumpeted on X. “Our schools should be inclusive places where students are not just comfortable asking for help—they’re empowered to do it.”
Empowered to “ask” for help by submitting to mandatory and invasive mental-health surveys, that is. If basic literacy hadn’t already collapsed in Illinois, kids might pose spirited objections to Pritzker’s sales pitch.
In fact, far too many American children and adolescents without debilitating mental disorders have already been funneled into the slippery mental-health pipeline.
I know: I’ve spoken to hundreds of parents of such kids.
In 2024, I published Bad Therapy, an investigation into the surge in adolescent mental-health diagnoses and psychiatric prescription drug use. Many young people without serious mental illness nonetheless spend years languishing with a diagnosis, alternately cursing it and embracing it, believing they have a broken brain, convincing themselves that their struggles are insurmountable because of the disorder’s constraints. They meet regularly with a therapist or school counselor on whom they become increasingly reliant, losing a sense of efficacy, unable to navigate on their own even minor setbacks and interpersonal conflicts. They begin courses of antidepressants that carry all kinds of side effects—suppressed libido, fatigue, the muffling of all emotion, and even an increase in depression. Antianxiety drugs and the stimulants given to kids diagnosed with ADHD are both addictive and ubiquitously abused.
Often that tragic descent begins with a simple mental health survey.
Corey D.August 22, 2025
Great article. I share the following experience, several years ago my brother was telling me about several teenagers that had taken their own lives in his area, one was in his ward, they were just two of a number of suicides in their area and high school. He was standing in line at the viewing for one of these kids and in front of him was a lady who is one of the counselors at the high school, he said to her, "what the heck is going on", she replied " I don't know, I can't explain it, we talk to them all the time about it, have assemblies, etc, tell them come talk to us, talk with somebody, family, teachers, whoever". I said to my brother maybe that's part of the problem, maybe we are talking to much about it. Not long after that I was talking to a neighbor, who at the time was in the stake presidency and is also a counselor/therapist, works mainly with young adult men 18-25, I told him about the conversation with my brother and asked him what he thought, he said it's interesting you mention that, I just asked my daughter about that the other day, she was a senior in high school at the time, her reply to her dad was, " we are tired of it, it's dark and depressing all the talk of suicide all the time". Interesting and insightful comment coming from a teenager. I think the same applies to all this mental health stuff, there is a line where it goes from reasonable concern to are we creating a problem and certainly if you have the state mandating testing you are very possibly creating problems.