In Defense of School Assessments

This week in Massachusetts there was quite the uproar over an incident in which the press alleged an 8 year old boy was suspended from school and mandated to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.  As I suspected there was more to the story.  What was really shocking about this turn of events was the initial flood of outraged blog posts, e-mails to news stations and calls to talk radio excoriating psychologists for pathologizing religion and looking for reasons to find mental illness in youngsters  In my experience, schools do not call for safety assessments unless they are truly worried about a child’s behavior.  Young children cannot verbalize their distress and therefore we have to look to other indicators to try our best to determine possible risk.  This often involves making tough calls (e.g., is a scary drawing a sign of trouble or just the imagination of a child?).  We do this to the best of our ability with one goal in mind: to make sure schools and students are safe.  That is why it was upsetting to me to see a public backlash against child psychologists over an incident that was initially improperly reported.