Parents, Educators Fight “Legal” Drugs in Schools

[Guest guest]

http://www.freedommag.org/english/Press/page06.htm

 

February 24, 2003

 

 

 

 

 

Parents, Educators Fight “Legal” Drugs in Schools

by Cory Brennan

An increasing number of school boards, public officials and parents are

challenging intrusive psychiatric programs and widespread drugging in schools,

and urging a return to academic solutions as the first priority.

 

Robert Parks* is a bright, active boy with a mind and will of his own. But in

his early school years, he had trouble adjusting to a classroom environment.

From the day Robert started school in the San Fernando Valley in Southern

California, his parents received reports that their son was running around the

classroom, not listening to the teacher and altercating with other students.

 

 

Within a few weeks, a school official asked the Parks to attend an

“Individualized Educational Program (IEP)” meeting about Robert with the school

nurse, several mental health workers, the principal and teacher. As the parents

soon learned, the IEP group had already decided that Robert needed psychiatric

treatment. Not having experienced these same alleged behavior problems with

their son at home, they disagreed.

 

 

The school continued to issue reports on Robert. The parents investigated,

finding logical explanations for their son’s behavior. A boy he hit had a

reputation as a bully. He got upset when his desk was moved without his consent.

He teased his younger sister. The Parks did not consider their son’s reactions

signs of “mental illness,” but rather common childhood behavior they handled at

home with communication or discipline. To them, the school was looking for an

easy way to control their son. School officials even suggested putting Robert

into “special education” while admitting he was of at least normal intelligence

and was not having problems with his schoolwork.

 

 

When the Parks family moved to a different district, Robert’s school records,

including a psychological profile, followed him to his new school where

officials were imbued with the idea the boy was mentally ill. School officials

began pressuring the Parks to put their son on psychiatric drugs, while

subjecting him to repeated psychological evaluations, at times without the

parents’ knowledge.

 

 

“They assessed and reassessed him like some kind of lab rat. The

psychological abuse inflicted on him is beyond belief,” Robert’s father told

Freedom. “For years he was always anxious to go to school to learn and make new

friends. Now it scares him. He was constantly followed with a pad and pen.”

Deteriorating State

 

 

When the school principal told the Parks he would call Social Services if

they refused to put Robert on a drug, they gave in and took their son to a

psychiatrist. With no medical examination and after asking the boy several

questions from a book, the psychiatrist, according to Robert’s father, told them

their son was “hyper” and prescribed a stimulant drug frequently given for

so-called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

 

 

Once on the drug, Robert experienced drastic effects. “He lost one forth of

his body weight in one month and his sleep patterns were disrupted,” his father

said.

 

 

Now, bad behavior reports on Robert poured in. The psychiatrist’s solution

was to increase the drug dosage in spite of the side effects. The Parks, alarmed

at their son’s deteriorating state, chose instead to put a stop to the drugging.

 

 

The school’s response was to suspend Robert, and to give the parents their

only options: continue the psychiatric “treatment” or take Robert to a special

school located in another town altogether. The Parks decided to do neither and

instead began to homeschool their son. He has been receiving an education ever

since without incident, free of the psychological and psychiatric meddling and

drugs that plagued his limited school years.

 

 

“The efforts of various psychologists and psychiatrists combined with the

school to deprive my son of the education he deserves,” Robert’s father said.

“They forced him out of school and spread vicious rumors around this small town

in an effort to keep him out of school, church and other community functions.

 

 

“My son has hurt no one, caused no damage to anything and is generally a

happy camper who reads two grade levels beyond his own,” he said. “I fear the

next ‘diagnosis’ will be ‘acute depression.’ Nothing could be further from the

truth—that is, until they get done with him.”

 

 

Meanwhile Robert does not have the right to be educated in public school

unless his parents agree to allow the administration of powerful drugs—drugs

which, by observation and experience, were harmful to their son. The Parks can’t

help but wonder why the public schools are in the business of diagnosing

children, or why school officials feel that drugs are the only way to control

students.

 

 

An isolated instance? Unfortunately not. Approximately six million children

in the United States are classified as “hyperactive”, “attention deficit” or

having other behavioral or learning “disorders” for which they are being

drugged. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a watchdog organization

founded by the Church of Scientology in 1969 to investigate and expose

psychiatric abuse, has received thousands of reports of abuse and harm of

children through the psychiatric system. Many of these children first found

their way into the mental health system in our public schools.

 

 

An increasing number of school boards and public officials across the United

States are challenging the intrusive involvement of psychiatry in the education

system, and urging a return to academic solutions as the first priority for

school problems faced by youth.

Schools as Mental Health Centers

 

 

One question that looms in many school districts is what the parent’s role,

versus the school’s role, should be in determining medical or mental health

treatment for children. The question desperately calls for more public debate

and research. Yet many public schools in California and across the nation are on

the fast track to act not only as partners with local mental health centers, but

as mental health providers by placing such centers on the school campus.

Additionally, video tapes, assessment tests and brochures are sent to schools in

increasing volume to “train” teachers and administrators how to “recognize

mental illness” in their students.

Diagnostic Fraud

 

 

Diagnoses of ADHD and other childhood mental health labels, including “math

disorders” and the catch-all “conduct disorders,” continue to skyrocket with

younger and younger children being drugged for “treatment.” In fact, a study in

the Journal of the American Medical Association in February of 2000 reported a

200 to 300 percent increase in antidepressants and stimulants given to children

age 3 and under.

 

 

The ADHD diagnosis has been repeatedly debunked, especially since a national

experts’ conference in 1998 resulted in the consensus that “ADHD” is bereft of

any scientific evidence and not a valid diagnosis. As stated in a Report to the

National Institutes of Health’s Consensus Conference on ADHD, “We do not have an

independent valid test for ADHD, and there are no data to indicate that ADHD is

due to brain malfunction. Further research to establish the validity of the

disorder continues to be a problem.”

 

 

Dr. William Carey, who addressed the consensus conference, stated, “What is

now most often described as ADHD in the United States appears to be a set of

normal behavioral variations....”

 

 

Diagnostic criteria for ADHD includes such “symptoms” as fidgeting, speaking

out of turn, interrupting, not being able to lay quietly, and losing schoolwork

or other items, with scientific qualifiers like “often” or “frequently”.

 

 

Nothing has evolved in more recent years to lend any scientific credibility

to “ADHD”. Yet despite the lack of evidence validating it—or other mental

disorders diagnosed in children—schools continue to be inundated with

information about how to “recognize ADHD” and are encouraged to refer children

for treatment.

Documented Dangers

 

 

As a result of such propaganda, stimulant prescriptions for American children

to “treat” ADHD have increased several hundred percent in the last decade. Now,

concern about the fraudulent “ADHD” diagnoses and drugging is catching

up—including studies that not only discredit any efficacy of stimulant drug

“treatment” but report distressing facts about their physiological effects.

 

 

That evidence includes a report in the August 22-29, 2001 issue of the

Journal of the American Medical Association on research conducted by Nora

Volkow, M.D. Researchers, according to Dr. Volkow, “were surprised as hell to

find evidence that [Ritalin] is more potent than cocaine. We didn’t expect

this.... The data clearly show that the notion that Ritalin is a weak stimulant

is completely incorrect.” Researchers acknowledged that the long-term effects of

chemical changes in the brain caused by methylphenidate (the chemical name of

Ritalin) are unknown, although drug has been used on children for several

decades.

 

 

A study released from the University of Buffalo in New York in November 2001

said research “suggests that [Ritalin] has the potential for causing

long-lasting changes in brain cell structure and function.”

 

 

Indicators have existed for some time that stimulant use causes brain

shrinkage, yet “Until now, possible effects on brain development... have not

been investigated systematically” read a report in Doctors for Disaster

Prepardness Newsletter of September 2001.

 

 

Reports also exist of psychotic symptoms, heart failure and stroke related to

stimulant use in children.

 

 

Dangers also include cancer. According to Samuel Epstein, M.D., emeritus

professor of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois School of

Public Health in Chicago, the American Society of Pediatrics “ignores clear

evidence of Ritalin’s cancer risks of which parents, teachers and school nurses,

besides most pediatricians and psychiatrists, still remain uninformed and

unaware.” Dr. Epstein, according to an October 2001 report of the Cancer

Prevention Coalition, is especially concerned because of the “escalating

incidence of childhood cancer, by some 35% over the last few decades.”

 

 

Psychiatric drugs, regardless, are in increasing use on children. Many of the

“symptoms” for prescribing them—which also include shyness, daydreaming, or

adolescent discontent—were considered part of the normal process of growing up

in past generations, subject to communication or discipline. Yet today parents

find themselves under increasing pressure to medicate Johnny for problems

ranging from difficulties with math to trouble with girls.

National Trend

 

 

An aspect of the trend most troubling to parents is that school teachers and

administrators are diagnosing their children.

 

 

When Yolanda Guzman’s first grade teacher in Los Angeles told her parents she

needed to be on Ritalin for behavior problems, the girl’s doctor disagreed. Due

to the insistence of the teacher, the doctor relented and prescribed the drug,

though refused to renew the prescription. When the family moved to Rosamond,

Yolanda’s mental health records followed her. The Guzmans were sent to College

Community Services where a social worker reportedly told them if they did not

have Yolanda on stimulants, all three of their children would be taken away from

them. Fearing the threat, Mrs. Guzman took Yolanda to a doctor in Los Angeles.

He refused to prescribe stimulants. Another doctor told the Guzmans that their

daughter could not be on stimulants as they would react badly with her asthma

medication. Yet the Guzmans say the director of College Health continued to

insist Yolanda be on a stimulant. The Guzmans continue their battle to keep

their daughter off drugs.

 

 

Similar battles are being fought all across the nation.

 

 

When some of Danny Grant’s teachers at his Sacramento school were unhappy

with his behavior and study habits, school officials said he had ADHD and

pressured the parents to get him on a stimulant drug. Though they had

reservations, the Grants dutifully took their son to a doctor who prescribed

Ritalin. The doctor told them Danny would experience no bad reactions and the

drug was not addictive. But Danny almost immediately had severe physical and

emotional reactions, including vomiting, uncontrollable crying, and inability to

eat or sleep. Alarmed, the parents took him off the drug, not telling the school

so they would not be pressured to put him back on.

 

 

Michael and Jill Carroll of Albany, New York, told officials at their son’s

school they were going to take their son off Ritalin because he was having side

effects that concerned them, including eating only one meal per day and sleeping

only a few hours per night—loss of appetite and insomnia being common side

effects of stimulants. The school’s response was to report them to child

protective services, which promptly placed them on a state-wide list of alleged

child abusers. The Carrolls risked having their child taken away from them if

they stopped the drug.

 

 

The examples go on and on—hundreds of similar cases have been reported to

chapters of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights throughout the United

States, as well as to child and family advocacy groups. According to the reports

of parents and education workers, the instances of such pressure and abuse

number at least in the tens of thousands.

Encouraging Signs

 

 

The implications of schools and social services conspiring to force parents

to drug a child or risk having that child be refused an education—or even taken

away from them altogether—are alarming authorities nationwide.

 

 

There are some encouraging signs that this alarm is turning into action.

Since 1999, school boards and legislators in eight states have passed

resolutions or laws demanding schools return to proven academic methods for

dealing with learning problems. Connecticut, in a unanimous legislative vote in

July 2001, was the first state to make it unlawful for any school teachers or

counselors to recommend psychiatric drugs for any child.

 

 

Education officials, teachers, doctors and parents are also increasingly

recognizing the wide range of other causes that can underlie behavior and

learning problems for children. These causes include food allergies;

insufficient or poor nutrition—such as consuming too much sugar or unnutritious

fast foods; chemicals in the environment such as pesticides or high levels of

lead, mercury or other substances toxic to humans.

 

 

Many schools are showing dramatic results with the academic approach alone.

At one such school, Bennett-Kew Elementary in Inglewood, California, reading

performance was raised from the 3rd to the 50th percentile in California. They

have used phonics instruction and other proven educational methods to teach

children, with the belief that no child, regardless of his circumstances or

socio-economic background, is impossible to teach. Though 78 percent of the

students in the school were classified as low income, Bennett-Kew Elementary

became one of the highest performers in Los Angeles County through good

teaching.

 

 

Some schools are doing something right.

 

 

A growing number of parents and educators are asking whether we shouldn’t

stop the drugging, and instead find out what successful schools are doing—and

implement their proven solutions across the boards.

 

* real name withheld at the request of parents for reasons of pending legal

action

 

 

 

 

 

 

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