SAMHSA Promotes Infant and Child Screening & Drugging

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Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:42:13 -0500

[sSRI-Research] SAMHSA Promotes Infant and Child Screening &

Drugging

 

 

 

 

 

SAMHSA Promotes Infant and Child Screening & Drugging

 

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)

Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability

www.ahrp.org

FYI

 

On October 17, 2005, Charles Curie, administrator of Substance Abuse

and Mental Health Services Administrator (SAMHSA), made the statements

listed below at a meeting with representatives of a coalition of

national groups of concerned citizens who requested the meeting for

the purpose of raising our concerns about the New Freedom Commission

report recommendations for mental health and their implementation via

the Federal Mental Health Action Agenda (FMHAA or " Action Agenda " [1]).

 

Those recommendations-in particular TeenScreen and TMAP (the Texas

medication algorithm project) are being funded by the federal

government through the State Incentive Grants for Transformation,

other federal laws, state laws, and private and government grants.

Together, they ensure the escalation of already spiraling

prescriptions of dangerous and ineffective psychotropic drugs for

children-without a medical need to justify that increase. [2]

 

In addition to statements indicating that TeenScreen and TMAP are no

longer considered model programs for the purposes of the Action

Agenda, despite the facts that they are still in place or being

funded, the following are several other key statements made by Mr.

Curie during this October 17th, 2005 meeting [3]:

 

a.. " The New Freedom Commission (NFC) report is not official

Bush Administration policy, but rather the unofficial recommendations

of an appointed commission. "

b.. The state incentive transformation grants (SITG), funded

at $26 million in the FY 2006 appropriations bill, is merely for

infrastructure for states to set up their individual transformation

plans for a " recovery oriented system. "

c.. The Federal Mental Health Action Agenda is " not really a

blueprint or road map for implementing the NFC report. "

 

AHRP board member, Dr. Karen Effrem, reviewed the Action Agenda and

other SAMHSA documents. She found evidence contradicting every one of

the statements made by the SAMHSA director:

 

a.. The NFC recommendations are clearly administration policy.

In the very first paragraph of the SAMHSA Action Agenda, it states

that the five principles " around which the New Freedom Commission on

Mental Health framed its work. embody the vision of transformation

that will guide the challenging but necessary work that lies ahead. " [4]

b.. The NFC report is the very foundation of the Action

Agenda. This Agenda involves at least 13 different offices and

agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and

at least five different cabinet level departments that have plans to

implement the NFC recommendations, including the Department of

Education where ineffective and dangerous federal mental health

programs like Foundations for Learning [5] (for ages 0-7) and Early

Warning, Timely Response [6] (based on politically correct attitudes)

are already rampant from preschool to high school.

c.. Contradicting the statements by Mr. Curie to us and to

Congress, and protestations by Representatives Ralph Regula (R-OH)

[7], Tim Murphy (D-PA) and Grace Napolitano [8] (D-CA) that the State

Incentive Grants (funded by Congress at $26 million for FY 2006) are

merely for planning, they are being used to implement the NFC

recommendation which include " early " universal mental health screening

" across the life span, " including all " 52 million public school

children " and " referral to treatment " which includes government

psychiatric drug programs like TMAP. The 2004 SAMHSA Matrix brochure

says, " SAMHSA is investing more than $517 million in transformation

efforts, including $47 million to fund the State Incentive Grants for

Transformation program to enable States to begin implementing the

Commission's findings. " [9]

 

 

a.. The Action Agenda is the means to implement the NFC

recommendations. Both the Action Agenda itself and several other

SAMHSA documents contain statements such as, " CMHS [Center for Mental

Health Services within SAMHSA] has contracted with a number of

national mental health organizations to provide technical assistance

to States in the development of activities and plans to implement the

New Freedom Commission recommendations. " [10]

 

One has to wonder, why would a top agency official deny that the NFC

recommendations are public policy and that the Action Agenda is an

implementation of those policies? What is Charles Curie afraid to

admit to citizens and their representatives in Congress?

 

Not only is there an enormous discrepancy between SAMHSA's statements

and the truth, but the agency also admits in the Action Agenda and

accompanying documents that it is using our tax dollars to recruit

non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to implement the NFC

recommendations:

 

a.. The Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) within

SAMHSA, as part of the technical assistance program mentioned above,

given taxpayer funds to contract with " the National Association of

State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) to coordinate this

project and to collaborate with six subcontractors: the Judge David L.

Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the Federation of Families for

Children's Mental Health, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill

(NAMI), the National Association of Mental Health Planning and

Advisory Councils (NAMHPAC), the National Council for Community

Behavioral Healthcare (NCCBH), and the National Mental Health

Association (NMHA) to " deliver written analysis or on-site training

and technical assistance on a range of policy issues related to the

implementation of the recommendations of the President's New Freedom

Commission on Mental Health " [11]

 

Every one of the organizations listed above has a vested financial,

power, and/ or professional interest in expanding the mental health

system and has been a wholesale, uncritical supporter of the screening

and medication recommendations in the NFC report. The State Mental

Health Program Directors and NAMI alone have received millions of

dollars in grants from the pharmaceutical industry. These groups have

an investment in expanding the roster of mental patients: thus, they

completely ignore scientific and medical evidence that contradicts

their agenda. It is, therefore, highly questionable that these same

groups were selected to be the providers of technical assistance

expanded to 45 states-all paid for by taxpayers via SAMHSA grants.

[12] Documents show that parents in the state of Missouri even

received training in how to lobby for more taxpayer funds to pay for

ineffective and highly controversial screening programs. [13]

 

NFC chairman Michael Hogan is the director of the Ohio Mental Health

Department, which was one of the first to adopt TMAP (Texas Medication

Algorithm Project). Hogan is one of TMAP's most aggressive promoters,

who has traveled across the country - all expenses picked up by drug

manufacturers. Hogan also served on an " Advisory Committee " of Janssen

Pharmacia, manufacturer of the antipsychotic Risperdal (risperidone) a

TMAP recommended first line treatment [14]--and he sits on the

advisory board of TeenScreen. [15] Thanks to Hogan and the other state

mental health program directors, TMAP has spread to at least a dozen

states and is affecting thousands of children, as young as age three,

in juvenile justice, foster care and welfare programs. [16]. The cost

of these psychiatric drugs is bankrupting state Medicaid programs. In

addition to being exorbitantly expensive, the TMAP recommended drugs

are dangerous, carrying the FDA's most stringent " Black Box " warning

about fatal side effects. In clinical trials most have failed to

demonstrate a clinical benefit greater than placebo, or a benefit

exceeding existing older and cheaper drugs.

 

 

These points and more were discussed in a follow-up letter from the

national coalition of concerned groups to SAMHSA on December 11, 2005.

Mr. Curie's January 12, 2006 reply to that letter did not address a

single one of these concerns. [17]

 

It appears that SAMHSA was not really interested in answering the

concerns of the AHRP and the others about these invalid and dangerous

programs. It also appears that interests of the pharmaceutical

industry and psychiatric establishment are more important to their

lapdogs in Congress and the bureaucracy than the rights of parents,

children and citizens.

 

The Abramoff scandal pales in comparison to the stench of mental

health establishment's influence over so many parts of the federal

government and in turn, so many state governments to label our

children in infancy and create a never-ending market of psychoactive

drugs. These drugs produce serious chronic side effects, including

obesity and diabetes-thereby necessitating the life-long use of

additional drugs to treat debilitating, chronic disease produced by

psychoactive drugs. Thus, drug company sales and profits will be

increased, while bankrupting taxpayer-funded programs.

 

The tragedy is young children are being labeled mentally ill by vague,

scientifically unsound criteria and becoming lifelong dependents on

dangerous drugs whose long-term ill effects have yet to be analyzed;

our freedoms of conscience; our parental authority; and our treasury

will bear the cost of these deceptions.

 

What will you do to stop it? Stay tuned for more of this story and

for what you can do.

 

[1] Federal Mental Health Action Agenda (FMHAA) at

http://www.samhsa.gov/Federalactionagenda/NFC_FMHAA.aspx

[2] See our statement on mental health screening at

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/11/02a.php for a summation of the

medical dangers of these drugs.

 

[3] For a detailed description, see our report at

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/10/24.php

[4] FMHAA

[5] See Dr. Effrem's description of this program at

http://www.edwatch.org/updates/070802.htm

[6] See the quote regarding " intolerance " from the Department of

Education's website for this program at

http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/actguide/action_guide.txt

 

[7] See an excerpt from Regula's floor speech against the Ron Paul

amendment to deny funding for universal mental health screening

programs http://edaction.org/2005/062705-mhs.htm

 

[8] See the Napolitano/Murphy letter against the Paul amendment at

http://www.teenscreen.org/cms/images/stories//mental%20health%20dc2.pdf

 

[9] http://www.samhsa.gov/Matrix/brochure.aspx, emphasis added

[10] FMHAA

[11] http://www.nasmhpd.org/targeted_ta.cfm, emphasis added

[12]http://www.nasmhpd.org/general_files/publications/tta_pubs/NASMHPD/IDIQ%20II\

/Mental%20Health%20Transformation%20Survey%20070105.doc

 

[13]

http://www.nasmhpd.org/general_files/CPT%20Final%20Report%20justin%20revisions.p\

df

[14] http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/09/19a.php

[15] http://www.teenscreen.org/cms/content/view/19/47

 

[16] Over 60% of foster children in Texas

(http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/11/13.php),

nearly two-thirds in Massachusetts

(http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/08/11.php),

and 55% of foster children in Florida

(http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/03/09/24.php)

are on as many as 16 different psychiatric drugs, starting as young as

age 3.

 

[17] Both letters are available at

http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/49/28/

 

 

 

 

Karen R. Effrem

(763) 458-7119

[kreffrem]

 

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

212-595-8974

veracare