Fwd: Cong May Act to Mandate Mental Screening for Pregnant Women, Babies & Toddlers

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"VERACARE" <veracareJuly 27, 2008 10:22:59 AM HSTCong May Act to Mandate Mental Screening for Pregnant Women, Babies & Toddlers ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountabilityhttp://www.ahrp.org <http://www.ahrp.org/>  and http://ahrp.blogspot.com<http://ahrp.blogspot.com> FYI and ACTIONDespite the serious economic crisis in the US, Congress is poised to pass aseries of laws that would HUGELY expand the pharmaceutical-dominated mentalhealth industry.In the Senate, majority leader Harry Reid (D - NV) has slipped acontroversial bill called The MOTHERS Act into an omnibus package called"Advancing America's Priorities Act" (S. 3297). The legislation, firstenacted in New Jersey would require pregnant and new mothers across the U.S.to be screened and treated because they are deemed to be at risk for mentaldisorders. The following is NOT something from Monty Python, but rather from the wordsof Senator Robert Menendez (NJ):"We must attack postpartum depression on all fronts with education,screening, support, and research so that new moms can feel supported andsafe rather than scared and alone." Menendez said. Aside from the intrusion into women's right to privacy, the distinguishingfeature of mental screens is their extraordinary high rate offalse-positive. These entirely subjective screens falsely designate healthypeople as depressed-- for which they are predictably prescribedantidepressants -- despite the fact these drugs carry a suicide warning.S 3297 stalled in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP)committee for months. The Mothers Act is supported by a powerful drug-fundedcoalition, including The Guttmacher Institute/ Planned Parenthood.http://www.cogforlife.org/ppsupporters.htm ; Postpartum SupportInternational, National Mental Health Association, The National Alliance forthe Mentally Ill (NAMI), Illinois Academy of Pediatrics, IllinoisPsychiatric Association...In the House, preschool children are the target of mental health legislativeinitiatives: HR 3289 "Providing Resources Early for Kids" and HR 2343"Education Begins at Home" target preschool children and their families. Thetitles camouflage the real purpose which is to expand the client base forthe pharmaceutical-dominated mental health industry.Below is a post by AHRP board member, Dr. Karen Effrem, a pediatrician,researcher, and conference speaker, who has been closely following covertlegislative efforts  that would expand the number of ever younger childrenas "mentally ill" thereby justifying government-mandated intrusion intotheir lives.Contact: Vera Hassner Sharavveracare212-595-8974US House Democrats Work to Mentally Screen Babies & Toddlers Nanny State Bills Expand Government Control Over Families  By Dr. Karen Effrem  July 17, 2008 Two bills which recently passed the U.S. House Education and LaborCommittee and are headed for floor debate clearly illustrate the insatiableappetite that the radicals in charge of Congress have for control over thehearts and minds of our nation's youngest children.   HR 3289, the ProvidingResources Early for Kids Act of 2008 (PRE-K Act), puts the federalgovernment in charge of what children will learn in preschool programs. HR2343, the Education Begins at Home Act, sets up invasive home visitingprograms.These bills put the government in control as both parent and educator forchildren from birth to age 5.  Both focus on poor families who have theleast wherewithal to resist this government intrusion, but they also extendto military families.  The home visiting bill calls for developmentalscreening, which includes mental screening, and the Pre-K Act promotesmental screening of all the children and their families in these programs.And of course, parental consent, choice, and control are never mentioned forany aspect of these bills.The Pre-K Act and its focus on the mental screening of young children isironic from at least two standpoints.   First, despite claims of itsproponents, early childhood programs are not effective and several studieshave shown evidence of academic and or emotional harm. For instance,illiteracy rates have actually increased in New Jersey where preschool forpoor children was court ordered.  And, data from several national studiesand surveys performed by the federal government have shown very significantincreases in defiant, disobedient, and aggressive behavior, as well asimpaired social skills in children who are attend preschool and child carecompared to children raised at home. So, it appears that rather than improving academic and social skills,preschool programs are actually creating the problems they purport to befixing.  These programs don't help children, but instead create permanentemployment for mental health professionals and increased profits for thepharmaceutical industry for the myriad harmful and ineffective psychotropicdrugs that are being prescribed to children at alarmingly younger ages.  Now, as is happening in Minnesota and states around the nation, thesesubjective screening results are going into children's records, falselylabeling them as academically, socially, or mentally defective even beforethey begin their academic careers. This has the potential of affectingcollege, military service and employment and expanding the rolls of theoverburdened special education system and government control in the schools.The second irony is that while Congress is promoting increased mentalscreening of young children, at least one member of New Freedom Commission,the group that first started publicly promoting the unscientific anddangerous idea of mentally screening young children, is having secondthoughts.  Dr. Daniel Fisher stated in a letter to the Boston Globe dated10/3/07:http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2007/10/03/screening_kids_poses_risk_of_harm/ However, screening Medicaid-covered children for mental illness isnot the answer. In fact, this approach has been rejected by Congress. Asuperficial screening by overworked pediatricians would likely result inmany false positives with devastating consequences for the children andtheir families. These quick-fix screening tests invariably end up with quickfixes of kids by labeling them and placing them on medication, without acomprehensive psychosocial evaluation and assistance to the children andtheir interpersonal environment. As a psychiatrist who has evaluatedchildren in schools, I know that myriad factors can cause what appear to besymptoms of mental illness.  Dr. Fisher is totally correct about the high number of false positives inmental screening tests.  One commonly used screening instrument has a 73%false positive rating, meaning that for every 27 children supposedlycorrectly identified as having an emotional problem on this screening testthat follow admittedly "subjective" criteria that are "value judgments basedon culture" according to the Surgeon General, 73 other families are falselytold that something is wrong with their child and referred for furtherevaluation and treatment which more and more commonly involves ineffectiveand sometimes lethally dangerous drugs. It is too bad that members of the new Freedom Commission are not seeing thedangers and problems of home visiting programs they promoted in their reportand that are laid out in the Education Begins at Home Act.  National studiesin 1999, 2004, and 2005 showed that home visiting programs did nothing todecrease child abuse rates.   The 1999 study had services costing up to $47,000 per family in 1999 dollarsand doing nothing to improve the cognitive development of the children.Studies of the model home visiting program touted in the New FreedomCommission report, the Nurse Family Partnership, while showing someimprovement in maternal behavior towards their babies, actually showed noimprovement in any of the following parameters: * "Children's behavior problems" or "emotional regulation"* "Maternal-child interaction"* "Children's mental development"* "Maternal educational achievement or employment" In addition, concerns have been raised about all of the following: * Consent for medical record review of the families* Data collection* Consent for participation and potential coercion with lossof their children or loss of services* Poor training of the visitors* Unscientific or biased information presented to families* The duplicitous role of the home visitor as both a helperand a mandated child abuse reporter* Loss of fourth amendment protections.For a detailed discussion of the many problems with home visiting programs,please see Dr. Karen Effrem's written testimony to Congress about this bill.http://www.edwatch.org/pdfs/102306-Response.pdfFinally, this bill also gives grants to "train" (i.e. indoctrinate) newparents in the hospital with the government's view of proper parenting.These includes getting babies into government early childhood programs assoon as possible. The attitudes, values, and beliefs of the children canthen be shaped by the government's view of issues such as feminism, genderand gender identity, multiculturalism, environmentalism and careers and asdiscussed above, may actually lead to emotional and academic problems.Parents, even low-income parents, and certainly not our military families,do not need the government to visit their homes to tell them how to raisetheir children or to tell them what their children should be taught beforeentering kindergarten.  Government should limit itself to promoting twoparent families which is the greatest, most effective mental health andsocial program available. Taxing families less would allow families toafford to have one parent at home to raise the children. Increasing thedomestic supplies of oil would keep food and fuel affordable for families.HR 3289 and HR 2343 are two examples among many as to why congressionalapproval ratings have dropped to single digits in the last two years. Dr. Karen Effrem,  is a pediatrician, researcher, and conferencespeaker. Dr. Effrem's medical degree is from Johns Hopkins University andher pediatric training from the University of Minnesota. She has providedtestimony for Congress, as well as in-depth analysis of numerous pieces ofmajor federal education, health, and early childhood legislation forcongressional staff and many organizations. Dr. Effrem serves on the boardsof four national organizations: EdWatch, the Alliance for Human ResearchProtection, ICSPP, and the National Physicians Center.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument & orgId=574 & topicId=100007427 & docId=l:826870020 & start=8Christian NewswireJuly 24, 2008 Omnibus Package Laced with Psychotropic 'MOTHERS Act' by Senator Harry ReidWASHINGTON, July 24 /Christian Newswire/ -- Senate majority leader HarryReid (D - NV) has slipped a controversial bill called The MOTHERS Act intoan omnibus package called "Advancing America's Priorities Act" (S. 3297)which is scheduled for a vote July 26. The MOTHERS Act, a bill to screen andtreat pregnant and new mothers across the U.S. at risk for mental disorders,has stalled in the Senate HELP committee for months. The abortion rightsgroups NARAL Pro-Choice America, The Guttmacher Institute, and PlannedParenthood publicly support The MOTHERS Act.Reid will move to invoke cloture and pass the $11.3 billion omnibus billthis Saturday without debate.Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R - OK) criticized Reid's plan, stating, "What thestaff members are saying is we want to bring a bill, but we don't want todebate it. We don't want to vote on it. We don't want to have it amended. Wedon't want the American people to know what we would rather do in secret."Citizens Against Government Waste commented, "If the legislation is worthyof taxpayer money, surely the Senate should have no problem spending time todebate the individual bills."Ironically, The MOTHERS Act is named for Melanie Stokes, who committedsuicide in 2001, following postpartum psychiatric treatment including fourseparate drug cocktails and electroshock therapy. Many of the groups backingthe bill also receive funds from or have high-ranking members working forpharmaceutical companies, or stand to profit from treating troubled women oroff of babies needing extensive medical care for birth defects and othercomplications.In January 2008, the New England Journal of Medicine published suppresseddata from drug companies that proved antidepressants work no better than aplacebo. The FDA warned repeatedly that antidepressants double suicides andissued numerous warnings concerning the use of antidepressants duringpregnancy. According to data from the FDA MedWatch system, from 2004-2007,an estimated 2,900 babies died via spontaneous abortion because of SSRIantidepressants given to pregnant women. Studies demonstrate thatantidepressants double spontaneous abortions and stillbirths and quintuplepreterm births. Babies exposed to SSRIs in pregnancy have a six-foldincreased risk of persistent pulmonary hypertension (PPHN), a potentiallyfatal lung problem. Nearly one third of women who take SSRIs duringpregnancy have a baby who dies, is premature or underweight, or who hasseizures.For more on the efforts to stop The MOTHERS Act and the Reid omnibus package(S. 3297), go to www.uniteforlife.org.CONTACT: Amy Philo,July 24, 2008=====In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.