No Child Left Unmedicated

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http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16574

 

Commentary: No Child Left Unmedicated

 

Written By: Phyllis Schlafly

 

 

Published In: Health Care News

Publication March 1, 2005

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

 

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) is a columnist, commentator,

author, and founder of the Eagle Forum. This article originally

appeared on Eagleforum.org and is reprinted with permission.