As a high school librarian near Arapahoe High School, my tortured response was the same as the headline of the Denver Post which read, "Again?"

The reality of mental illness in our schools is indisputable, and yet remains deeply in the closet. Talk to the counselors, psychologists and social workers in your high schools, and they may discreetly tell you about the self-harm behaviors they see in our kids.

Beyond the horrors of school shootings, the self-harm that both at-risk and high achieving students inflict on themselves as a coping strategy for stress is toxic: alcohol, drugs, self-mutilation, eating disorders, and worst of all, suicidal ideation. According to the Centers for Disease Contral and Prevention (CDC), suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 24; finding statistics on other types of self-harm is more difficult.

In my opinion, the stress that teens are experiencing has drastically increased since 2002, when No Child Left Behind introduced high-stakes testing as a means to get rid of bad teachers. In Colorado, we also have Senate Bill 191, which requires that 50% of a teacher's evaluation must be based on students' standardized test scores.

The unintended consequence of basing teachers' employment and salaries on test scores is that inevitably we pass on to our students and their parents the idea that high test scores are the prime objectives in high school to get into the best university and thereby succeed in life. This is highly profitable to testing companies, which have been the chief beneficiaries of the high-stakes testing movement started in 2002.

Education reform and the focus on testing damages both teachers and students. As education becomes increasingly politicized, teachers are seen as the enemy and our students become numbers: GPA, ACT, SAT, IB, AP, class ranking and state testing scores. Add to that the other stresses of adolescence such as body image, work, peer pressure and family worries, and it becomes clear that surviving high school unscathed is an accomplishment.

It's time for school districts to anonymously survey our kids to monitor their mental and emotional well-being. If we can gather that data, we may have a chance to stand up to the political and financial beneficiaries of the education reform movement and again focus on what is best for our students. Education scholar Dr. Yong Zhao says that teachers and district administrators MUST follow the same precept of the Hippocratic oath, "First, do no harm." Let that guide us as we lead the young people under our care to a happy, healthy and productive adulthood.