Children registering for school in Florida this year were asked to reveal some history about their mental health.

The new requirement is part of a law rushed through the state legislature after the FebruaryÌýÌýin Parkland, Fla.

°¿²ÔÌýÌýfor new students, the state’s school districts now must ask whether a child has ever been referred for mental health services.

“If you do say, ‘Yes, my child has seen a counselor or a therapist or a psychologist,’ what does the school then do with that?” asked Laura Goodhue, who has a 9-year-old son on the autism spectrum and a 10-year-old son who has seen a psychologist. “I think that was my biggest flag. And I actually shared the story with a couple of mom friends of mine and said, ‘Can you believe this is actually a thing?'”

Goodhue said she worries that if her children’s mental health history becomes part of their school records, itÌý.

“If my child was on the playground and something happened,” she said, “they might think, ‘This child has seen mental health services. This must mean something’ — more than it really means.”

The question was largely overlooked until parents started filling out school registration forms this summer. It was one sentence in aÌýÌýthat contained such controversial measures as increasing the minimum age to buy a gun and arming school employees.

Parents express concern that the information could fall into the wrong hands and may follow children throughout their education, saidÌý, executive director of the Florida chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

“In a perfect world, getting treatment for mental health challenges would be no different than getting medical treatment for a skin rash or a bad cold or a broken leg,” LaPolt said. “But that’s not the world we live in right now. There is stigma around mental illness and getting treatment for it.”

School districts say counselors will use the information to help Florida students get the services they need.

Some districts will share the information only with psychologists and administrators. Others say they will provide access to teachers and front-office staff as well.

School counselors say they understand the stigma surrounding mental illness. Some say the way the law was written doesn’t help. The mental health question was grouped with requirements to report arrests or expulsions.

“I can certainly understand parents having a reaction when they see those questions, sort of, asked back to back, saidÌý, manager of psychological services for Pinellas County Schools.

But in order to help students, Cowley said, school officials must first determine who needs mental health services.

“The process we’re trying to develop and everything we’re trying to do is just with an eye toward reducing stigma, increasing awareness and getting students access to more care,” Cowley said.

The requirement has school districts worried about more than just stigma. The state left implementation of the provision up to local districts.

At a meeting in Tampa, Fla., Hillsborough County School Board memberÌý raised the issue of patient privacy and a federal law that protects it, known asÌý.

“I could foresee some lawsuits around this,” Griffin said.

Still, counselors say more parents may support the law once they start to see children getting the counseling they need.

°Õ³ó±ðÌýÌýnearly $70 million to increase access to mental health services in schools. National experts say the money is long overdue.

Florida has historically been among the worst states in terms of providing money for mental health care, saidÌý, senior policy adviser for the National Alliance on Mental Health.

“We know that the symptoms of mental health conditions and serious mental illnesses in particular tend to surface during the teen years and early 20s,” Honberg said. “And that’s a time when we should be putting the most resources into interventions.”

In Broward County, where Parkland is located, the district is using part of theÌýÌý— many of them counselors, psychologists and social workers.

Their ability to reach students in need could depend on whether parents feel comfortable checking “yes” on a registration form.

This story is part of a partnership that includes , and Kaiser Health News.

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[UPDATED March 8]

A billÌýÌýWednesday has received huge attention because of a controversial provision that would allow some teachers to have guns in schools. But the measure, now headed to the governor’s desk, would also designate an influx of cash for mental health services.

The state has seen three mass shootings in 20 months — at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the Fort Lauderdale airport and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. And the need for increased mental health funding has come up twice before — with no cash forthcoming.

In today’s dollars, Florida is spending 40 percent less on mental health than it did in 2000, according toÌý, interim president of the Florida Council for Community Mental Health.

“That means there are fewer providers or fewer sources that the individuals can access,” she said. And that lack of resources, she and other mental health care providers say, undercuts the ability to catch mental illness early and treat it.

Since 2000, the state has increased funding for mental health services by $218 million. But that hasn’t kept up with inflation and the 4.5 million people who have moved to Florida since then, Brown-Woofter said.

The shooting in Parkland shifted the focus of many people in Florida and nationally to mental health. President Donald Trump and other leaders were quick to label the 19-year-old man who killed 17 people at his former high school mentally ill.

Republican Gov. Rick Scott called for $500 million for school safety, including giving young people more counseling and crisis management.

“Florida is never going to be the same — and we’ve got to make sure Florida is never the same,” Scott said duringÌýa recent appearance in Tampa. “We’ve got to make sure we have common-sense solutions to make sure every parent knows that their child is safe.”

The mental health provision is attached to theÌýÌýgun legislation. It raises the age of most firearm purchases to 21, institutes a mandatory three-day waiting period for all firearm purchases and bans the sale ofÌý, devices that can be attached to a weapon to enable it to fire more quickly.

These provisions are not popular with many in Florida’s legislature, where conservatives have opposed any restrictions on gun ownership in the past. On the Democratic side of the aisle, there was opposition to the provision allowing guns in schools (and Scott, too, opposes that).

But many people on both sides of the gun issue favor the bill’s mental health provisions, whichÌýwould allocate nearly $90 million more for mental health resources, including $69 million for schools.

Right now, there is roughly one school psychologist for every 2,000 students in Florida. The National Association of School Psychologists suggests there should be four times as many.

Ìýis a psychiatrist at All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg. The renewed interest and funding is a good start, he said, but “it alone is not going to prevent the next episode of mass violence.”

Though lawmakers have stressed that early detection of mental illness is key to keeping another school shooting from happening, Cavitt said there are other contributing factors, such as drug and alcohol use and gun availability. More research is needed, he said, to tease out the true mix of causes.

Brown-Woofter said she does think legislators are directing some money in the right place in this budget: funding to put more counselors in schools and to offer more training to help school employees identify mental illness.

“We are really pleased to see the attention and the awareness of mental health services now in the budget,” she said.

Survivors of the shootings also may need ongoing treatment, she said, and more counselors in schools could help students and parents get through situations like this — including families and schools that weren’t directly affected.

Hayes DuJardin, 15, worries that the same thing could happen at his school in Lakewood Ranch, south of Tampa.

“Parkland versus my school — they are very similar in the way they are set up,” he said. “So, everyone was asking, ‘How are we preventing this from happening here?'”

In the days after the shooting, officials across Florida chased down dozens of threats. Hayes said he was so disturbed by one online threat he came across that he brought it to the attention of his mom, Michelle DuJardin. It had a picture of a teen holding a gun with the words “Get ready for round two, Florida.”

“It’s terrifying when an incident like this happens,” Michelle DuJardin said. “You can’t help but be angry — scared.”

This story is part of a partnership that includes Health News Florida, and Kaiser Health News.

This article first appeared on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø News and is republished here under a .

When a hepatitis C treatment called Harvoni was released in 2014, Dr. Ronald Cirillo knew it was a big deal.

“It’s the reason that dragged me out of retirement!” he said.

Cirillo specialized in treating hepatitis C for more than 30 years in Stamford, Conn., before retiring to Bradenton, Fla. During his time in Connecticut, the onlyÌýÌýfor hepatitis C had terrible side effects and didn’t work well. It cured the viral infection less than half the time. But the newer drugs, Harvoni and Sovaldi, cure almost everybody, with few adverse reactions.

“In my lifetime, I’ve seen it change from a horrible treatment to a manageable treatment,” Cirillo says.

His mission is finding the patients.

“The disease is out there,” he said. “My job is to get the disease in here, so we can follow them and treat them.”

Last year, Cirillo joined theÌýÌýfree clinicÌýin Bradenton, about an hour south of Tampa. The clinic primarily serves uninsured Floridians who fall into what many call aÌýÌýin states like Florida that chose not to expand Medicaid. These are people who make less than about $12,000 a year.

Cirillo is trying to test every high-risk patient he encounters. On a recent weekday in the clinic, his assistant pricked a patient’s finger, and squeezed blood onto the end of a small plastic tube.

“And this little measuring tool goes into the blood and solution mix there,” Cirillo said. “We are going to time it — 20 minutes and that’s it. That’s the test.”

Nearly 30,000 people in Florida were found to have hepatitis C in 2016. It’s likely that many more are infected, because the virus can lie dormant for decades.

Cirillo spearheaded a partnership with Harvoni’s maker, Gilead Sciences, and that partnership has provided treatment to about 100 patients.

“We treat people without any insurance, that have no hope,” Cirillo said.”If you qualify to be a patient here, you’ll get tested.”

A 57-year-old patient named Patricia discovered she had hepatitis C a few months ago during a trip to the clinic. NPR and Kaiser Health News are not using her last name because the virus is sometimes associated with illegal IV drug use. It can also spread via sex. Patricia said she’s not sure how she got it.

“So, just because of my age, I guess, they went ahead and tested me for it and it blew my mind that I actually had hep C,” she said. “And the levels ended up being relatively high.”

The virus had started to scar and inflame her liver. But she lacked insurance and a job; the $94,000 Harvoni treatment would have been out of reach if she hadn’t had financial help from the drugmaker.

“I would never have been able to afford that treatment,” she said. “Never.”

Staff at the clinic help patients fill out the complicated application from Gilead. Only patients who don’t have insurance, have been drug-free for at least six months and who meet income requirements are eligible.

Patricia was able to get the treatment — one pill a day for 12 weeks — and will be tested again in three months to determine whether she is free of hepatitis C.

“Had they not discovered it and gotten me onto the program — really, who knows?” she said.

This story was produced with theÌýÌýandÌý.

This article first appeared on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø News and is republished here under a .