Mental Health Screening: A Form of Child Abuse--Children Drugged Without Parenta

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Fri, 29 Apr 2005 01:18:09 -0400

[sSRI-Research] Mental Health Screening: A Form of Child

Abuse--Children Drugged Without Parental Consent

 

 

 

Mental Health Screening: A Form of Child Abuse--Children Drugged

Without Parental Consent

 

Tue, 19 Apr 2005

 

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/04/19a.php

 

The documented case report of Aliah Gleason, a 13 year old Texas

school girl, provides shocking hard evidence revealing the true threat

to children's mental health and safety. The worst thing that can

happen to a child is to be caught up in the grid of the state mental

health system.

 

" The Gleasons would not be allowed to see or even speak to their

daughter for the next five months, and Aliah would spend a total of

nine months in a state psychiatric hospital and residential treatment

facilities. While in the hospital, she was placed in restraints more

than 26 times and medicated - against her will and without her

parents' consent - with at least 12 different psychiatric drugs, many

of them simultaneously. "

 

This shocking report in Mother Jones reveals that when state mental

health agencies are involved, parents lose their rights and children

can be removed from their parents' care, children can be incarcerated

in a psychiatric facility, and children can be forced to take multiple

psychiatric drugs which are so dangerous they carry a Black Box

warning that scientific evidence established that even short exposure

to SSRI antidepressants put children at a twofold increased risk of

suicidal behavior.

 

The case encapsulates the serious negative impact that government

imposed mental health screening initiatives--such as were recommended

by the New Freedom Commission Report--are having on children.

 

Children are being traumatized and brutalized with physical and

chemical restraints: their mental health, their physical safety and

their health are all being undermined--for whose benefit?

 

The case provides evidence of how the Texas Medication Algorithm

Project (TMAP) is being coercively implemented. TMAP was also

recommended by the New Freedom Commission report: it was initiated by

a consortium of drug companies, and formulated by psychiatrists at the

University of Texas who have significant financial ties to those

companies.

 

Rob Waters, who broke the story about FDA officials muzzling Dr.

Andrew Mosholder, whose report about pediatric trials testing SSRI

antidepressants led to congressional investigations, and was

instrumental in bringing to public attention that a twofold increased

risk of suicidal behavior is linked to SSRIs, has opened the lid on

the abuse that awaits America's children who are deemed to have

" mental health " problems.

 

Below is a reminder that " Comfortably Numb " a film about another child

victim of psychotropic drugs, will be showing on May 1 at noon at the

New York International FILM FESTIVAL- Village East Cinema locatedat

12th STREET AND 2ND AVENUE IN MANHATTAN.

 

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

212-595-8974

 

 

When state mental health officials fall under the influence of Big

Pharma, the burden falls on captive patients. Like this 13-year-old girl.

 

By Rob Waters

May/June 2005 Issue

 

ALIAH GLEASON IS A BIG, lively girl with a round face, a quick wit,

and a sharp tongue. She's 13 and in eighth grade at Dessau Middle

School in Pflugerville, Texas, an Austin suburb, but could pass for

several years older. She is the second of four daughters of Calvin and

Anaka Gleason, an African American couple who run a struggling

business taking people on casino bus trips.

 

In the early part of seventh grade, Aliah was a B and C student who

" got in trouble for running my mouth. " Sometimes her antics went

overboard - like the time she barked at a teacher she thought was

ugly. " I was calling this teacher a man because she had a mustache, "

Aliah recalled over breakfast with her parents at an Austin restaurant.

 

School officials considered Aliah disruptive, deemed her to have an

" oppositional disorder, " and placed her in a special education track.

Her parents viewed her as a spirited child who was bright but had a

tendency to argue and clown. Then one day, psychologists from the

University of Texas (UT) visited the school to conduct a mental health

screening for sixth- and seventh-grade girls, and Aliah's life took a

dramatic turn.

 

A few weeks later, the Gleasons got a " Dear parents " form letter from

the head of the screening program. " You will be glad to know your

daughter did not report experiencing a significant level of distress, "

it said. Not long after, they got a very different phone call from a

UT psychologist, who told them Aliah had scored high on a suicide

rating and needed further evaluation. The Gleasons reluctantly agreed

to have Aliah see a UT consulting psychiatrist. She concluded Aliah

was suicidal but did not hospitalize her, referring her instead to an

emergency clinic for further evaluation.

 

Six weeks later, in January 2004, a child-protection worker went to

Aliah's school, interviewed her, then summoned Calvin Gleason to the

school and told him to take Aliah to Austin State Hospital, a state

mental facility. He refused, and after a heated conversation, she

placed Aliah in emergency custody and had a police officer drive her

to the hospital.

 

The Gleasons would not be allowed to see or even speak to their

daughter for the next five months, and Aliah would spend a total of

nine months in a state psychiatric hospital and residential treatment

facilities. While in the hospital, she was placed in restraints more

than 26 times and medicated - against her will and without her

parents' consent - with at least 12 different psychiatric drugs, many

of them simultaneously.

 

On her second day at the state hospital, Aliah says she was told to

take a pill to " help my mood swings. " She refused and hid under her

bed. She says staff members pulled her out by her legs, then told her

if she took her medication, she'd be able to go home sooner. She took

it. On another occasion, she " cheeked " a pill and later tossed it into

the garbage. She says that after staff members found it, five of them

came to her room, one holding a needle. " I started struggling, and

they held my head down and shot me in the butt, " she says. " Then they

left and I lay in my bed crying. "

 

What, if anything, was wrong with Aliah remains cloudy. Court

documents and medical records indicate that she would say she was

suicidal or that her father beat her, and then she would recant. (Her

attorney attributes such statements to the high dosages of

psychotropic drugs she was forcibly put on.) Her clinical diagnosis

was just as changeable. During two months at Austin State Hospital,

Aliah was diagnosed with " depressive disorder not otherwise

specified, " " mood disorder not otherwise specified with psychotic

features, " and " major depression with psychotic features. "

 

In addition to the antidepressants Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro, and

Desyrel, as well as Ativan, an antianxiety drug, Aliah was given two

newer drugs known as " atypical antipsychotics " - Geodon and Abilify -

plus an older antipsychotic, Haldol. She was also given the

anticonvulsants Trileptal and Depakote - though she was not suffering

from a seizure disorder - and Cogentin, an anti-Parkinson's drug also

used to control the side effects of antipsychotic drugs. At the time

of her transfer to a residential facility, she was on five different

medications, and once there, she was put on still another atypical -

Risperdal.

 

The case of Aliah Gleason raises troubling - and long-standing -

questions about the coercive uses of psychiatric medications in Texas

and elsewhere. But especially because Aliah lives in Texas, and

because her commitment was involuntary, she became vulnerable to an

even further hazard: aggressive drug regimens that feature new and

controversial drugs - regimens that are promoted by drug companies,

mandated by state governments, and imposed on captive patient

populations with no say over what's prescribed to them.

 

In the past, drug companies sold their new products to doctors through

ads and articles in medical journals or, in recent years, by wooing

consumers directly through television and magazine advertising.

Starting in the mid-1990s, though, the companies also began to focus

on a powerful market force: the handful of state officials who govern

prescribing for large public systems like state mental hospitals,

prisons, and government-funded clinics.

 

One way drug companies have worked to influence prescribing practices

of these public institutions is by funding the implementation of

guidelines, or algorithms, that spell out which drugs should be used

for different psychiatric conditions, much as other algorithms guide

the treatment of diabetes or heart disease. The effort began in the

mid-1990s with the creation of TMAP - the Texas Medication Algorithm

Project.

 

Put simply, the algorithm called for the newest, most expensive

medications to be used first in the treatment of schizophrenia,

bipolar disorder, and major depression in adults. Subsequently, the

state began developing CMAP, a children's algorithm that is not yet

codified by the state legislature. At least nine states have since

adopted guidelines similar to TMAP. One such state, Pennsylvania, has

been sued by two of its own investigators who claim they were fired

after exposing industry's undue influence over state prescribing

practices and the resulting inappropriate medicating of patients,

particularly children.

 

Thanks in part to such marketing strategies, sales of the new atypical

antipsychotics have soared. Unlike antidepressants - which have been

marketed to huge audiences almost as lifestyle drugs - antipsychotics

are aimed at a small but growing market: schizophrenics and people

with bipolar disorder. Atypicals are profitable because they are as

much as 10 times more expensive than the old antipsychotics, such as

Haldol. In 2004, atypical antipsychotics were the

fourth-highest-grossing class of drugs in the United States, with

sales totaling $8.8 billion - $2.4 billion of which was paid for by

state Medicaid funds.

 

At a time when ethical questions are dogging the pharmaceutical

industry and algorithm programs in Texas and Pennsylvania, President

Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has lauded TMAP as a

" model program " and called for the expanded use of screening programs

like the one at Aliah Gleason's middle school. The question now is

whose interests do these programs really serve?

 

Continue to part II

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of

which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright

owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to

advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral,

ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this

constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided

for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This

material is distributed without profit.

 

PLEASE COME TO THE SHOWING OF " COMFORTABLY NUMB " AT THE NEW YORK

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL- VILLAGE EAST CINEMA LOCATED AT 12TH

STREET AND 2ND AVENUE IN MANHATTAN. SUNDAY, MAY 1, 2005 AT NOON.

 

WE NEED YOUR PRESENCE, PLEASE COME

 

Comfortably Numb is a riveting short documentary that portrays the

devastating effects of psychiatric drugs given to more than 8 million

American children. Kids as young as two years of age are being given

powerful, mind-altering drugs, most of which have not been properly

tested or approved for children.

 

Comfortably Numb pierces the wall of secrecy that surrounds the

multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry and exposes the flaws in

a system that creates riches for some while it devastates the lives of

others.

 

Through interviews with a young victim and her father, as well as

respected medical professionals, this piece portrays the heartbreaking

reality of suffering and even death that shadows the business of

selling drugs for children.

 

Have we lost our minds in allowing this to happen, or have we simply

become Comfortably Numb?