HB2313 authorizes the Tennessee Department of Health, in partnership with the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, to create and administer a new “early childhood mental health home visiting program.” Under this bill, licensed mental health clinicians would visit families in their homes and conduct mental health and developmental screenings on children from birth through age five.
The pathway to drugging children: Programs like this do not operate in isolation. A mental health screening almost always leads to a diagnosis. A diagnosis almost always leads to a prescription. For children zero to five, that prescription is almost certain to be a powerful, mind-altering psychotropic drug — often one that carries an FDA black box warning, the agency’s most serious safety alert, and one that has frequently never been tested in children at all. This bill, whatever its stated intent, creates a structured pipeline that ends with more of Tennessee’s youngest children on psychiatric medications.
“Voluntary” does not mean safe: The bill describes the program as voluntary. But families in poverty, families involved with child welfare, and families in crisis are rarely in a position to freely decline a government-sponsored program that arrives at their door. The populations this bill explicitly targets — families facing poverty, trauma, and parental substance abuse — are precisely those who are most vulnerable to pressure, whether explicit or implied, to participate. “Voluntary” on paper can mean something very different in practice.
HB2313 is presented as a compassionate early intervention program. In reality, it is a government-funded mechanism to bring mental health screening and diagnosis — and ultimately psychiatric medication — to Tennessee’s most vulnerable infants and toddlers and into their family homes. Children this young cannot consent. They cannot report side effects. They cannot advocate for themselves. It is our job to do it for them. We urge all House members to vote no on HB2313.
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