Many parents enter child mental health care assuming that assessment, testing, and evaluation will lead to greater clarity regarding their child’s diagnosis, core problem, and optimal treatment. After all, blood draws, cultures, biopsies, and advanced imaging modalities, like CT-scans and X-rays, are hallmarks of American (bio)medicine. However, child mental health care is not like other medical specialties, for which tests and assessments might definitively point to a root cause of pathology with few if any risky “side effects.”

Working with schools is a hallmark of child mental health. Schools are important sources of collateral information that supplement parents’ reports about how their children are doing at home. If children are doing well in one space and poorly in another, that finding can help providers pinpoint root causes of distress and determine appropriate interventions. Child mental health providers routinely gather collateral from schools through phone calls to counselors, teachers, and school psychologists. Other sources of collateral information include individualized educational plan (IEP) and 504 plan meetings and reports, as well as assessments completed by teachers. Examples include the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire used to evaluate children’s mental health overall and the Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham (SNAP) Questionnaire used to diagnose attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD).