TeenScreen

TeenScreen National Center

Formation	1999
Purpose	Mental health screening
Headquarters	New York City
Key people	Executive director, Laurie Flynn
Parent organization	Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University

The TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups at Columbia University was an evidence-based, national mental health and suicide risk screening initiative for middle- and high-school age adolescents. On November 15, 2012, according to its website, the program was terminated. The organization operated as a center in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department at Columbia University, in New York City. The program was developed at Columbia University in 1999, and launched nationally in 2003. Screening was voluntary and offered through doctors' offices, schools, clinics, juvenile justice facilities, and other youth-serving organizations and settings. As of August 2011^[update], the program had more than 2,000 active screening sites across 46 states in the United States, and in other countries including Australia, Brazil, India and New Zealand.

The program was developed by a team of researchers at Columbia University, led by David Shaffer. The goal was to make researched and validated screening questionnaires available for voluntary identification of possible mental disorders and suicide risk in middle and high school students. The questionnaire they developed is known as the Columbia Suicide Screen, which entered into use in 1999, an early version of what is now the Columbia Health Screen. In 2003, the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, created under the administration of George W. Bush, identified the TeenScreen program as a "model" program and recommended adolescent mental health screening become common practice.

The organization launched an initiative to provide voluntary mental health screening to all U.S. teens in 2003. The following year, TeenScreen was included in the national Suicide Prevention Resource Center's (SPRC) list of evidence-based suicide prevention programs. In 2007, it was included as an evidence-based program in the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)'s National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices. In 2009, the organization launched the TeenScreen Primary Care initiative to increase mental health screening by pediatricians and other primary care providers, the same year the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended annual adolescent mental health screening as part of routine primary care, and the Institute of Medicine recommended expansion of prevention and early identification programs.