No Child Left Unmedicated
By Phyllis Schlafly - Health Care News - The Heartland Institute
- 4 March 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.
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/answers/2004/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.
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.
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId
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