THE COMMONWEALTH of Massachusetts continues to live up to its reputation as a national healthcare leader by requiring mental health screenings for all children who receive Medicaid ("Mental screening for young to begin," Page A1, Dec. 27).
We hope that this screening will become routine for all children, independent of health insurance status. This is an important step toward ensuring that all health issues of our children, both physical and mental, are addressed at the earliest stages.
As the program moves forward, the entire mental health and pediatric community must pay particular attention to our youngest - those 5 and under.
Better screening tools and services are needed for these children who are just learning to communicate their feelings and are developing rapidly. Current screening tests for young children are too long and difficult to score to be practical for routine use.
In addition, more services are needed that target preschoolers. We are working to develop better screening instruments, and many professionals are working together with the state to develop additional services for these children.
Massachusetts has made early detection of mental health problems in children a priority.
Now we all must work together to ensure that appropriate help is available after these concerns are identified.
Dr. ELLEN PERRIN
Dr. CHARLES MOORE
Floating Hospital for Children
Boston
Perrin is director of the Center for Children with Special Needs, and Moore is medical director of inpatient child psychiatry.
I'M CURIOUS how something like this screening requirement could be approved in this day and age. I would have flunked the screening at age 6 when I freaked out when my mother left me at school the first day. Then again at 11 when I wrote a dirty poem that got confiscated by a teacher. Then again when my first girlfriend broke up with me. By this time I might have been a walking medicine chest, waiting to erupt into true violence or self-destruct, as some of my later grown-up friends did after their introduction to psychiatric drugs to "handle" their "depression." There is money behind this measure - drug company profits (what would those companies do if we were all normal?) and psychiatrists' fancy houses (not that they wouldn't deserve them if they actually did something for mental health).
STEPHEN DRASCHE
New York
