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Florida’s New Mental Health Disclosure Law – Helpful or Harmful?
By: Jessica Plouffe
What is the law? This law is technically a revision to a law in Florida dedicated to school safety that was implemented in response to the Parkland shooting in February; the original law was in place before Parkland. In part, this legislation states that individuals with mental illness are prevented from accessing guns, until “certain relief is obtained,” and that individuals below a minimum age cannot purchase firearms. Armed security is also required in every school. Additionally, the law revision discusses school discipline and student mental health. A passage from the law, cited in the news article pertaining to this law, states that schools should “require each student at the time of initial registration for school in the school district to note previous school expulsions, arrests resulting in a charge, juvenile justice actions, and referrals to mental health services the student has had.” In the Collier schools district, Florida district highlighted in the news article (which, perhaps notably, is NOT the district that contains Parkland schools), a social worker will visit with any student who has indicated disciplinary action of the seeking of mental health services, to help them continue to get the services that they need. It is not clear if this will be the policy in every district, though schools are required to have a mental health plan for students. It is also not clear exactly what types of discipline or mental health concerns should be reported, though many types of disciplinary action is automatically reported to any district that a student attends, regardless of this law.
What are the potential benefits to this law? Parkland experienced a tragedy of tremendous proportions; as a Newtown resident, this hits pretty close to home. The purpose of this revision is purportedly to improve school safety, and there are certainly circumstances in which this would avert future tragedy. This law would help to keep guns out of the hands of potentially dangerous individuals – both individuals who would potentially be dangerous to others, and individuals who would be potentially dangerous to themselves. After all, all mass shootings, and a significant proportion of successful suicides, are the result of a gun.\
The intended purpose of this law is not only to prevent tragedy, but to also help students receive additional services. For students who have parents who do not support or cannot afford mental health services, this revision could be crucial for mental health access for those students. Having the question standard on school entry forms could also help to normalize mental illness, and help to inform parents (and schools) that children can and do experience mental health disorders. This may both encourage parents to seek help for a struggling child, and help parents to learn the main signs that they should notice for a variety of mental health concerns.
It is notable to mention that school shootings are incredibly difficult to predict, and thus are very difficult to prevent (Mulvey & Cauffman, 2001).
The problem, of course, is that it is not often clear exactly what to look for, who should have looked for it, or what should have been done if someone had seen something. Indeed, in postmortems of these situations, one often picks up signs of distress or despair in these adolescents, but one is rarely sure if the level or types of indicators found would have been enough to make even a vigilant and caring adult do something markedly different than what was done. After all, for every killer youth, there are many others with the same behaviors or attitudes who never come close to killing their classmates (pp. 797-798).
Thus, it is also incredibly difficult to create a policy that will successfully prevent any shooting, let alone every shooting. In that regard, this law does have the potential to prevent future shootings, and even if there are aspects of this law that are imperfect, it is certainly better than nothing, and it can be improved based on its effectiveness and future research on the topic. If it is known which students might be dangerous, then it is possible to provide more and better services to those students. Teachers and school administrators would most likely be better trained in recognizing signs of a current or imminent crisis, and would be better equipped to handle students in a crisis when such situations arise. It can also be argued that is much better to over-identify potentially dangerous students than to risk missing potentially dangerous students.
What are the problems associated with this law? First, while there are cases in which this law would prevent tragedy, there would be other cases in which it would not. In the case of Sandy Hook, for example, Adam Lanza was no longer in the public school system, and thus would not have been impacted by this law. And it can be argued that people with mild mental illness – or even any mental illness – should not have their gun rights infringed. The previously-cited quote from Mulvey & Cauffman (2001) can also be used to explain why trying to identify potential future shooters is often impossible:
The problem, of course, is that it is not often clear exactly what to look for, who should have looked for it, or what should have been done if someone had seen something. Indeed, in postmortems of these situations, one often picks up signs of distress or despair in these adolescents, but one is rarely sure if the level or types of indicators found would have been enough to make even a vigilant and caring adult do something markedly different than what was done. After all, for every killer youth, there are many others with the same behaviors or attitudes who never come close to killing their classmates (pp. 797-798).
If the signs of distress and despair among students before they conduct a shooting are not severe enough to justify a teacher taking action, then it is unlikely that these students would have been referred to disciplinary action or mental health services in the first place, and thus these shooters would not have been picked up by this law.
Perhaps more importantly, this law is concerning to mental health experts, future mental health experts, and mental health advocates alike. There is significant stigma associated with mental illness, and that could cause negative impacts on the children; additionally, therapists are required to maintain confidentiality with their clients and cannot disclose information about a client’s condition without permission (except in special circumstances), and this law is at odds with this principle. In the news article about this law, Scott Burgess, CEO of the David Lawrence Center, expresses concern that parents will be worried about stigma and therefore will withhold that information from the form. Furthermore, special education and civil rights attorney Rosemary Palmer points out that previous mental health services do not necessarily have any correlation with a student’s current mental health status. I will add the additional concern that the knowledge of this law will prevent parents from seeking services for their children in fear of the school knowing their children’s mental health status, or that older children and adolescents will keep their mental health concerns to themselves to avoid their parents sending them to therapy and the school (and potentially their teachers and friends) learning about the condition.
Additionally, there are potential consequences to releasing mental health information that are not prevented by this law. Schools could utilize discriminatory practices in which students to accept to a school and which classes to place them in. Teachers, too, could have negative reactions towards a child with disclosed mental health information, if teachers are to have access to this information. It has been well-documented that teacher’s expectations of individual students are highly correlated with actual student achievement (i.e. Jussum & Madon, 1994). Furthermore, Mulvey & Cauffman (2001) note that students who are falsely identified as dangerous or seriously mentally ill often are subjected to significant stigma (p. 798), not to mention that symptoms of mental health disorders such as psychopathy in adults are often developmentally typical symptoms in teenagers (Edens, Skeem, Cruise, & Cauffman, 2001, as cited in Mulvey & Cauffman).
What do you think? Do you agree with parts of the law but not others? Do the benefits of this law outweigh the costs, or do the costs outweigh the benefits?
Law Statute: http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=1000-1099/1006/Sections/1006.07.html
The Change in the Statute: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2018/07026
Literature on Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=teacher+expectations+and+student+achievement&oq=teacher+expectation
Predicting School Shootings:
Mulvey, E. P., & Cauffman, E. (2001). The inherent limits of predicting school violence. American Psychologist, 56(10), pp. 797-802. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.56.10.797
About the Author: Jessica is a Senior at Western Connecticut State University studying Psychology as part of the Kathwari Honors Program. She is a Research Assistant at WCSU’s Cognition lab and President of the same university’s Psi Chi Chapter and a member of the Psychology Student Association.