BLACKHERBALS.COM
No Child Left Unmedicated
By Phyllis Schlafly
Health Care News
The Heartland Institute
March 4, 2005
- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Illinois Provides Model
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Drugs Not Proven Effective
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- 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/answers/2004/ans01306.html.)
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- Parents Bypassed, Children Stigmatized
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- 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?
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- 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.
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- Phyllis Schlafly (phyllis@eagleforum.org) is a
columnist, commentator, author, and founder of the Eagle Forum.
This article originally appeared on Eagleforum.org and is
reprinted with permission.
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- http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16574
