no child left unmedicated

Commentary: No Child Left Unmedicated


Written By: Phyllis Schlafly
Published In: Health Care News
Publication Date: March 1, 2005
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

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Big Brother is on the march. A plan to subject all children to mental health screening is underway, and the pharmaceutical firms are gearing up for bigger sales of psychotropic drugs.

Like most liberal, big-spending ideas, this one was slipped into the law under cover of soft semantics. Its genesis was the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFCMH), created by President George W. Bush in 2002.

The NFCMH recommends "routine and comprehensive" testing and mental health screening for every child in America, including preschoolers. Bush has instructed 25 federal agencies to develop a plan to implement the commission's recommendations.

The NFCMH proposes utilizing electronic medical records for mental health interrogation of both children and adults, to search for mental illnesses in school and during routine physical exams. The NFCMH also recommends integrating electronic health records and personal health information systems.

The NFCMH recommends "linkage" of these mental examinations with "state-of-the-art treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions." That means prescribing more expensive, patented antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs.


Illinois Provides Model

Illinois became the first state to jump on board. By near-unanimous votes in 2003, both houses of the state legislature passed the $10 million Illinois Children's Mental Health Act creating a Children's Mental Health Partnership (ICMHP), which is expected to become a model for other states.

The ICMHP's plan, released on July 16, calls for periodic social and emotional development examinations to be administered to all children, and for all women to be interrogated for depression during pregnancy and up to a year postpartum. When the ICMHP showcased this plan with five public hearings stacked with bureaucrats and social service workers, a political tempest erupted, with state legislators saying they had no idea this was what they had voted for.

Illinois legislators were shocked to hear the details. The plan includes periodic developmental exams for children ages 0-18 years, a statewide data-reporting system to track information on each person, social-emotional development screens with all mandated school exams (K, 4th, and 9th), and report cards on children's social-emotional development.

The plan is to add mental health assessment to the state's physical examination certificate, along with mandatory immunization records. All children in Illinois, unless religiously exempt, are required to have up-to-date health examinations and immunizations for school enrollment.

The ICMHP requires the Illinois State Board of Education to develop and implement a plan that incorporates social and emotional standards as part of the mandated Illinois Learning Standards, which were due on the governor's desk by December 31, 2004. This inevitably opens up screening for politically incorrect attitudes and nonconformity with liberal attitudes of tolerance.


Drugs Not Proven Effective

Mental health diagnoses are inherently subjective and social constructions, as even the diagnostic manuals admit. Many thousands if not millions of children would receive stigmatizing diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of their lives.

"State-of-the-art treatments" will result in many thousands of children being medicated by expensive, ineffective, and dangerous drugs. The long-term safety and effectiveness of psychiatric medications given to children have never been proven, but the side effects are known and severe. They include suicide, violence, psychosis, cardiac toxicity, and growth suppression. Several school shooters, such as Eric Harris (Columbine) and Kip Kinkel (Oregon), were on antidepressants or stimulants when they committed their crimes.

The validity of much scientific research has lost its credibility because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has allowed the pharmaceutical industry to withhold data not favorable to their products and because persons in the pay of the pharmaceutical firms are the ones recommending the medications.

The current controversy about links between suicide and antidepressant drugs that have not been adequately tested has contributed to the uproar. The FDA posted an analysis in August stating some antidepressants pose a risk of suicide in children. (See http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/answer.../ans01306.html.)


Parents Bypassed, Children Stigmatized

Parental rights are unclear or nonexistent under these mental health screening programs. What are the rights of youth and parents to refuse or opt out of such screening? Will they face coercion and threats of removal from school, or child neglect charges, if they refuse privacy-invading interrogations or unproved medications? How will a child remove a stigmatizing label from his records?

A Columbia University pilot project for screening students, called TeenScreen, resulted in one-third of the subjects being flagged as "positive" for mental health problems. Half of those were turned over for mental health treatment. If that is a preview of what would happen when 52 million public school students are screened, it would mean hanging a libelous label on 17 million American children and forcibly putting 8 million children into the hands of the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry.

that shit is crazy!!i was part of the ritalin(meth)generation,95% of drug's like those cause more problem's that they help.

yes, have you heard of the new freedom initiative? search for my name and look up the posts i've made regarding it.

this is a hallmark of tyranny.

http://infowars.com/articles/brave_n..._amendment.htm

now, before you go, there is a newsmax article, 2 world net daily articles, and something from dr. dennis cuddy...alex jones wrote none of it, and the new freedom initiative actually exists.

thank you for providing a real new's source. i am against that piece of horrific information.unless my kid's are trying to kill themselves or other's(or speaking strange languages to themselves you have to get a court order to get them on any med's at all.

all the links at infowars.com and prisonplanet.com are links to real news sources. their own writing or commentary comprises maybe 2% of the sites.

the web-sites themselves speak for themselves.half-truth's,misquotes,and the like.

whatever.

anyone who spends 10 minutes there knows otherwise. it's links to mainstream stuff. just because it's not frontpage news like sports or entertainment or o'reilly isn't covering it, doesn't mean it's not happening.

i have spent more than 10 minute's there in the past couple of day's and that's exactly what it is.wether you agree with the word or not,it's nothing more than SPIN.

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unless my kid's are trying to kill themselves or other's(or speaking strange languages to themselves you have to get a court order to get them on any med's at all.

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You don't want your kids on these antidepressants EVEN if they are trying to kill themselves.
Children on antidepressans are 180% more likley to commit suicide.
http://www.newstarget.com/002243.html
http://www.prozactruth.com/

good point!i agree 100%!what is it with our obsession to medicate ourselves with these drugs?opinion's?

well, you all know how it's going to be... any kid who doesn't adhere to the republican party line is gonna be medicated until he's compliant..

This program is by far the scariest thing to come out of Bush's presidency. I can understand that people don't know about a lot of stuff going on because the government hides it or changes it slightly to appear more palatable, but this is issue black and white, it's so obvious what the gov't is trying to do... I'm surprised not many Americans are talking about this or even aware... Scary shit

with all due respect this has been going on for alot longer than President bush has been in office.besides,that dosent even make sense.the entire decade of the 90's was the same thing.get a grip with your silly remark's about bush flesh.jesus,not everything is Bush's fault.i didn't know he was a psychologist.it's scary.

why don't you stop whining so much and do something about it.there aren't even any serious opponents out there for the republican's.the dem's continue to self-implode,the green party has failed yet again to put anyone on the ticket that would get anyone's attention and the same with the libertarians.no matter how much complaining you do it is impossible to win a national election if you dont have a single solid position on anything.the electoral college isn't going anywhere.have you seen the map from election day?that should be a serious eye opener for you.maybe you should look at it again.i am not a republican kool-aid drinker and if a man or women(not billary)would come along and present a better agenda i would vote for them.i don't care if they are black,white,man,women,muslim,christian,or jew.you can't beat the republican's by saying"hey,we aren't W"dont you understand that?it isn't going to happen.a person can bitch all they want about evangelical christians but in the end they can obviously make or break a campaign.you can complain all you want about the south but it is impossible to become president without it.that will never change.support from one group of american's like moveon will not win you anything.don't you understand that.why do you think kerry lost so big everywhere?the entire country was red!!you had New York and California and the upper midwest blue.that's it!o8' and 12' will be the exact same if the other group's continue to exclude each other and the rest of the country.and that's reality.

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Originally Posted by amsterdam

the web-sites themselves speak for themselves.half-truth's,misquotes,and the like.

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I agree infowars and prison planet are a load of paranoid bullshit

i bet u drug use, homosexuality, moral relativism, anyone non-christian, will all be considered mental disorders and theyll be thrown in an asylum.

I don't believe anti-depressants are harmful when not used as a life-sentence. I realize that alot of people don't like them, but they helped me through some hard times in my life. With my eyelids at half-mast life is mostly bareable. It's funny they give us anti-d's and then say it's pathetic to have an addiction to an illegal drug. Ah well, the best anti-depressent is and always has been pot.

if that's what you believe juggalo,you would be wrong.a little paranoid maybe?look into zoloft.lol