Illinois educators are less than a year away from undertaking one of the most consequential mental health initiatives in the world. This week, as we mark World Mental Health Day, Chicago should seize the opportunity to lead that effort.
We know when mental health conditions begin: Nearly half of all cases appear before age 18, while a child is still sitting in one of our classrooms. Right now, we find these children late. Schools are where we could find them first.
Signed into law on July 31, 2025, Illinois Senate Bill 1560 made the state the first in the nation to require universal mental health screenings, or UMHS, for students. Starting with the 2027-28 academic year, every public and charter school in Illinois must offer these screenings for all students in grades three through 12, for which the state will provide a free screening tool.
Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest district, enrolls more than 300,000 children — 1 in 6 Illinois public school students — and could play a defining role in the success of this groundbreaking initiative.
The past decade has brought on varied traumas for Chicago’s youths. Gun violence, COVID-19 and fear of immigration raids, to name a few, have accelerated the structural, socioeconomic causes of psychosocial challenges.
Beyond increased self-harm and suicide, youths are reporting rising unhappiness and a shrinking sense of belonging.
And despite the city’s growing mental health resources, the most in-need residents are left wanting. In Chicago, suicide rates rose among Black, Latino and Asian residents between 2015 and 2021 while falling among white residents, researchers at the University of Chicago found. About 1 in 10 Black suicide deaths was a child or teenager.
Addressing this vulnerable population of youths in Chicago begins with understanding and prevention. We must identify youths in crisis before it is too late and provide them with the resources they need.
Mayor Brandon Johnson made mental health a cornerstone of the Healthy Chicago 2025 Strategic Plan, which aims to close the 8.8-year life expectancy gap between Black and white Chicagoans in one generation. Together We Rise, CPS’ five-year strategic plan, highlights student connectedness and well-being, emphasizing collaborative approaches to assess student needs, monitor intervention progress and leverage community partners for support.
Universal screening is one way those plans become reality. Done well, universal mental health screenings will provide the first population-level map of where youth mental health needs actually sit, letting the state and municipalities direct resources based on evidence rather than assumption. Early detection is also instrumental to addressing chronic absenteeism, classroom misconduct and student disconnectedness detrimental to any learning environment.
Done badly, UMHS will fail to fulfill their promise and become a sorting mechanism — identifying distress in schools ill equipped to treat it — without connecting adolescents to care.
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While many Chicago schools choose to screen students, they are far from a majority. Schools already routinely check physical health, such as exams for children’s vision and hearing. Universal screening extends that same practice to the whole child.
As a key pillar of Gov. JB Pritzker’s Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative, the state has spent significant resources laying the groundwork for UMHS. The Illinois State Board of Education gathered data on current practices and readiness of school districts across the state for the past several years, published guidance and FAQs in August, and announced plans to provide a free screening tool for districts.
CPS is far from leading on UMHS. It did not formally participate in ISBE’s multiple inquiries to assess school district capacity for UMHS, and it has not yet announced any public plans to act on the new ISBE guidance.
These delays may be a natural consequence of a district stretched too thin. Barring additional funds from Springfield, CPS faces continued budget deficits and staffing shortages into the next school year. Administrators may see UMHS as nothing more than an unfunded mandate that merely adds to the myriad crises Chicago schools face.
UMHS, however, is not a matter of “if” but “when.” Universal screening will be the law of the land beginning with the 2027 school year. And it is not another problem for Chicago leaders to solve. It is a solution.
Chicago cannot waste this opportunity to take advantage of a cost-free tool provided by the state that will equip teachers and administrators and save the lives of students. Despite the reduction in budget and staff, Chicago’s emphasis on student well-being and existing infrastructure positions CPS to lead on UMHS and provide critical support to the city’s youths — but only if it acts now.
As advised in ISBE’s published guidance, CPS must begin engagement efforts now to ensure that each of its schools are aligned with staff to appropriately administer screenings, that parents’ concerns are heard and discussed, that proper consent mechanisms are installed and that key stakeholders are engaged.
By leading, CPS could use UMHS to jump-start programs to further ease everyday burdens on administrators and staff. UMHS provides an opportunity to pilot additional mental health programs across schools, map school-level studies, and work with local providers to prepare evaluation protocols and referral pathways.
Chicagoans — parents and youths alike — must demand a plan from CPS. The school board should require regular updates on it. For candidates running to join Chicago’s first fully elected board this November, committing to those updates should be a top priority.
Almost no government in the world has a systematic way of finding where its young people are psychologically struggling. Illinois is about to, and Chicago can serve as a model for other municipalities, states and countries.
What gets built here is what the rest will copy. We should be a beacon for a revolution in mental health treatment and understanding.
Vanessa Andersen is a sustainability commissioner for the city of Park Ridge. Chime Asonye founded Nigerian Mental Health, a network advancing mental health policy and disability inclusion in Nigeria and across its diaspora. Andrew Cockroft is an attorney at King & Spalding, where he advises employers on government investigations and workforce compliance. Brian Peckrill is executive director of the Chicago-based William G. McGowan Charitable Fund. The authors are 2026 emerging leaders at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
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