May 14, 2016 By Luke Campbell Staff Writer Lcampbell@thealmanac.Net 4 min read

Following a local school district’s fifth student suicide in the past six years, state Rep. Dan Miller, D-Mt. Lebanon, introduced legislation that would require a mental health checkup that would at minimum include a depression screening for each student in Pennsylvania by age 14.

The announcement of the bipartisan bill – its co-sponsor is Rep. Judy Ward, R-Blair County – was made by Miller and supported by mental health advocates on May 13 at the Baldwin Township Municipal Building.

“Mental health, or brain health, issues are even more important than the physical health issues,” Miller said. “What this bill does is it takes the same idea that, as your child gets older and as they go through school, we will be requiring certain things to be sure that they are in good health.”

The bill is intended to kick start early intervention efforts in mental health to get information to parents so they can take proactive measures.

“What we are trying to do is to give parents information,” Miller said. “Most parents, I’m sure a vast majority, will take necessary steps once given information on what to do. It is my strong hope that at the very minimum, people will have that conversation and then make informed decisions about what to do.”

The initiative – supported by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Outreach Teen and Family Services and American Foundation for Suicide Prevention – shares eye-opening statistics about the severity and regularity of mental illnesses in children.

According to Julianne Washington, NAMI Southwestern Pennsylvania advocacy director, suicide is the second leading cause of death in American ages 15 to 24. Out of those who committed suicide, 90 percent had an underlying mental health issue. Sixty percent of those people also were suffering from depression at the time of their deaths.

“Those numbers are really staggering,” Washington said. “We need a realistic and practical answer to the increasing number of young lives lost to suicide. An initiative to require mental health screening at the crucial age of 14 is a needed step to save the lives of youth living with a mental illness.”

The Jason Foundation Inc., a Tennessee-based organization dedicated to the prevention of the “silent epidemic” of youth suicide through educational and awareness programs, reported that 5,400 suicide attempts are made each day in that same 15-to-24 age range.

Mental health issues always are at the forefront for Miller as he has conducted a disability/mental health summit for the past three years, since taking state office. His impetus for the mental health checkup proposal, House Bill 2057, came from a “A Mother’s Reckoning,” a book Miller read months ago describing the aftermath of the mother of one of the gunman in the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo.

“For brain health issues, we are waiting until something horrible happens all too often for us to get involved,” Miller said. “You can’t just look at somebody, unlike physical health, and understand whether or not they have a mental health issue that needs to be addressed. It is not what you just see, and we have to embrace and understand that.”

Miller already has received backing from several Republicans and Democrats in the Pennsylvania Legislature but is hoping to continue to gain even more support when he and Ward travel to Harrisburg in a few weeks.

“We need to open the dialogue between parents and their teens about mental health and eliminate the stigma associated with it,” Washington said. “We need to reduce the growing number of children who are taking their own lives by promoting early detection and intervention for mental illness. We need our children to receive mental health screenings so that they can live healthy lives.”