Link to help stop funding for forced mental screening and drugging of children

[Guest guest]

Congressman Ron Paul, a physician by trade, has sponsored HR 181. Here's how

he explains his cause … A presidential initiative called The “New Freedom

Commission on Mental Health†has issued a report recommending forced mental

health screening for every child in America, including preschool children. The

goal

is to promote the patently false idea that we have a nation of children with

undiagnosed mental disorders crying out for treatment.

 

One obvious beneficiary of the proposal is the pharmaceutical industry, which

is eager to sell the psychotropic drugs that undoubtedly will be prescribed

to millions of American schoolchildren under the new screening program. Of

course a tiny minority of children suffer from legitimate mental illnesses, but

the widespread use of Ritalin and other drugs on youngsters who simply exhibit

typical rambunctious, fidgety, and impatient behavior is nothing short of

criminal. It may be easier to teach and parent drugged kids, but convenience is

no

justification for endangering them. Children's brains are still developing,

and the truth is we have no idea what the long-term side effects of psychiatric

drugs may be. Medical science has not even exhaustively identified every

possible brain chemical, even as we alter those chemicals with drugs.

 

Dr. Karen Effrem, a physician who strongly opposes mandatory mental health

screening, warns us that “America's children should not be medicated by

expensive, ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and dubious

diagnoses.

†She points out that psychiatric diagnoses are inherently subjective, as

authors of the diagnostic manuals admit. She also is concerned that mental

health

screening could be used to label children whose attitudes, religious beliefs,

and political views conflict with the secular orthodoxy that dominates our

schools.

 

The greater issue, however, is not whether youth mental health screening is

appropriate. The real issue is whether the state owns your kids. When the

government orders “universal†mental health screening in schools, it really

means “

mandatory.â€

 

… Parents must do everything possible to retain responsibility and control

over their children's well-being. There is no end to the bureaucratic appetite

to rule every aspect of our lives, including how we raise our children. Forced

mental health screening is just the latest of many state usurpations of

parental authority: compulsory education laws, politically-correct school

curricula,

mandatory vaccines, and interference with discipline through phony “social

services†agencies all represent assaults on families. The political right has

now joined the political left in seeking the de facto nationalization of

children, and only informed resistance by parents can stop it. The federal

government is slowly but surely destroying real families, but it is hardly a

benevolent

surrogate parent.

 

PLEASE ACT NOW. Go to:

http://www.downsizedc.org/index.shtml

Scroll down to bottom of the site above. This site will send a very short

coment from you to your Senators and Representative.