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Mandatory Mental-Health Screening
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| Trancer-X |
ACTION ALERT
September 7, 2004
The American tradition of parents deciding what is best for their
children is, yet again, under attack. The pharmaceutical industry
has convinced President Bush to support mandatory mental-health
screening for every child in America, including preschool children, and the industry is now working to convince Congress as well. But mandatory screening alone is not what the pharmaceutical industry wants. The real payoff for the drug companies is the forced drugging of children that will result -- as we learned tragically with Ritalin -- even when parents refuse.
Congressman Ron Paul, an OB/GYN physician for over 30 years, is
desperately trying to keep the drug companies, politicians and federal bureaucrats from becoming parents to your children. Dr. Paul will introduce on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning (whenever the floor schedule allows) an amendment to the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Act for FY 2005 that will withhold funds for this new federal mental-health-screening program. He will urge his
congressional colleagues to support his effort in a letter to be
distributed tomorrow morning.
Dr. Paul's letter says in part: "As you know, psychotropic drugs
are increasingly prescribed for children who show nothing more than
children's typical rambunctious behavior. Many children have suffered harmful effects from these drugs. Yet some parents have even been charged with child abuse for refusing to drug their children.
The federal government should not promote national mental health
screening programs that will force the use of these psychotropic
drugs such as Ritalin."
If you think this action alert is about something that "can't
happen here," think again. In 1995, the state of Texas launched the
Texas Medication Algorithm Project. (WorldNetDaily.com, June 21, 2004)
The state of Illinois has also approved a mental health screening
program. The Illinois legislature passed the Children’s Mental Health Act of 2003 which will provide screening for "all children ages 0-18" and "ensure appropriate and culturally relevant assessment of your children's social and emotional development with the use of standardized tools." In addition, all pregnant women in Illinois are
to be screened for depression.
Dr. Karen R. Effrem, another physician and leading opponent of
mandatory screening recently stated, "Universal mental health screening and the drugging of children, as recommended by the New Freedom Commission [presidential commission], needs to be stopped so that many thousands if not millions of children will be saved from receiving stigmatizing diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of their lives. America's school children should not be medicated by
expensive, ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and
dubious diagnoses."
Dr. Effrem warns of the following:
1. Parental rights are unclear or non-existent under these
screening programs.
2. Parents are already being coerced to put their children on
psychiatric medications and some children are dying because of it.
3. Mental health screening does not prevent suicide.
4. Mental health diagnoses are “subjective” and “social
constructions” as admitted by the authors of the diagnostic manuals
themselves.
5. Most psychiatric medications do not work in children.
6. The side effects of these medications in children are severe.
7. The untoward influence by the pharmaceutical industry, or at
least the impropriety, is abundantly clear in two important aspects
of this issue.
8. Merging screening with the academic standards required by No
Child Left Behind, as is happening in Illinois, will lead to
diagnosis for political reasons. School mental health and violence
prevention programs funded by NCLB and government counterterrorism
operations are already using such criteria as "homophobia" and "defenders of the US Constitution against federal government and the UN" to label school children and US citizens as mentally unstable and violent.
Texas first...Illinois second...and the rest of America to follow
if we aren't successful within the next 24 to 36 hours. We'll be
calling on House members' offices tomorrow asking for votes in favor
of Dr. Paul's amendment to stop this forced, federal mental-health
screening.
Join concerned citizens from Eagle Forum, Gun Owners of America,
the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Concerned Women
of America, Freedom 21, the Alliance for Human Research Protection,
and the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and
Psychology to get Dr. Paul’s amendment passed.
One last note...if mental-health screening for every American child
isn't bad enough, how about mandatory mental-health screening for
every American adult? Yes, that's coming too. The final report of
the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health states,
"Both children and adults will be screened for mental illnesses during their routine physical exams."
Please help. Urge your U.S. representative to support the Paul
amendment and ask family and friends to do the same. To send your
message, go to
http://capwiz.com/liberty/issues/al...6333001&type=CO
After you've sent your message, forward to your family and friends
the following page:
http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/update09.07.04.htm
Kent Snyder
The Liberty Committee
Details of Dr. Effrem's Points:
http://edaction.org/2004/082704.htm
"Bush to screen population for mental illness" by WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/a...RTICLE_ID=39078 |
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| Arbiter |
| I've heard about this a few times before and I'm definitely troubled by it. However, it's difficult to assess the acutal danger of it without seeing a comprehensive written description of the proposed policy. At this point, to my knowledge, this idea hasn't even reached that milestone yet - at least, not that's available to the public. So at this point I'm inclined to just wait and see what comes of this before hitting the panic button. |
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| NeoPhono |
| This is troubling, although I'd like to see the scope of the proposed legislation as Arbiter said, before getting too concerned. I'll try to find the link, but there was a study done where 4 psychologists observed a classroom of elementary students independently and after their studies were done, they had collectively deemed 90% of the class as having some sort of psychological issue in need of medication. The fault for this lies on many shoulders, but pharmaceutical companies have a big burden to bare. It's amazing that drug companies can advertise the way they do, and it would be even more amazing for drug companies to be able to mandate testing that would for all intents and purposes lead to an increase in their sales. |
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