Derry Oliver was in fifth grade when she first talked to her mom about seeing a therapist.
She was living in Georgia with her brother while her mom was in New York scoping out jobs and apartments ahead of moving the family. It was a rough year apart. Oliver, now 17, was feeling depressed. A school staffer raised the idea of a therapist.
Oliver’s mom, also named Derry Oliver, questioned the school’s assessment and didn’t give consent for therapy. “You’re so young,” the mom recalled thinking. “There’s nothing wrong with you. These are growing pains.”
The issue boiled over again during the COVID-19 pandemic when the younger Oliver, struggling with the isolation of remote learning, reached out to her Brooklyn high school for help. School-based mental health professionals like social workers can provide some counseling without parent permission. But in New York, referring a student to more intensive therapy almost always requires a parent’s agreement. In Oliver’s case, that led to more conflict.
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As schools across the country respond to a youth mental health crisis accelerated by the pandemic, many are confronting the thorny legal, ethical, and practical challenges of getting parents on board with treatment. The issue has become politicized, with some states looking to streamline access as conservative politicians elsewhere propose further restrictions, accusing schools of trying to indoctrinate students and cut out parents.
Differing perspectives on mental health aren’t new for parents and kids, but more conflicts are emerging as young people get more comfortable talking openly about mental health and treatment becomes more readily available. Schools have invested pandemic relief money in hiring more mental health specialists as well as telehealth and online counseling to reach as many students as possible.
Society needs to discuss the ethical dilemma of medical treatment without a parent’s consent. Minors cannot give consent for any medical treatment.
That does not mean that we should withhold medical treatment from minors absent parent’s consent. I am pretty sure if a student got shot at school, you wouldn’t be for calling parents before giving medical aid - nor withholding aid if the parents say “just let them bleed out”.
The issue is here that people don’t see mental health treatment as necessary as physical health. There are mental heath situations as dire as being shot.
There’s an ethical difference between emergency medical care and non-urgent but necessary medical care. You can’t honestly compare treating a gunshot wound to therapy, and emergency mental health treatment usually involves hospitalization. That’s not the kind of care that this article is talking about.
Minors can very much consent to medical treatments, even more so once they reached their teens. It’s their own body and their own health.
Not in the USA. Providers are allowed to give emergency care, but anything else requires parental approval. Individual states may have exceptions passed into law (e.g. MN allows treatment of minors w/out parental knowledge for the areas of substance abuse and reproductive health, although not for abortions).
To be clear, I agree with your moral argument, but you are legally incorrect (in the USA, at least).
There is also the problem of bad faith actors. The US has a terrible track record with involuntary care, or just straight up lying and using people as human guinea pigs (the Tuskagee Airmen are just the tip of the iceberg). I would love to think that things are better now, but we have to accept a non-zero percentage of medical providers would absolutely do horrible shit if they could get away with it. We have relatively decent safeguards in place, but we could probably use more.
Incorrect. Minors cannot give consent, but older minors can assent to medical care, which is basically going along with it without complaint.