The American tradition of parents deciding what is best for their children is,
yet again, under attack. The pharmaceutical industry has convinced President Bush to
support mandatory mental-health screening for every child in America, including
preschool children, and the industry is now working to convince Congress as well. But
mandatory screening alone is not what the pharmaceutical industry wants.
The real payoff for the drug companies is the
forced
drugging of children that will result – as we learned tragically with Ritalin – even when parents refuse.
Congressman Ron Paul, an OB/GYN physician for over 30 years, is desperately
trying to keep the drug companies, politicians and federal bureaucrats from becoming parents to your children. Dr. Paul will introduce on Wednesday evening or
Thursday morning (whenever the floor schedule allows) an amendment to the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Act for FY 2005 that will withhold funds for this new
federal mental-health-screening program. He will urge his congressional colleagues to support his effort in a letter to be distributed tomorrow morning.
Dr. Paul’s letter says in part: “As you know, psychotropic drugs are
increasingly prescribed for children who show nothing more than children’s typical
rambunctious behavior. Many children have suffered harmful effects from these drugs. Yet
some parents have even been charged with child abuse for refusing to drug their
children. The federal government should not promote national mental health screening
programs that will force the use of these psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin.”
If you think this action alert is about something that "can’t happen here,”
think again. In 1995, the state of Texas launched the Texas Medication
Algorithm Project. (WorldNetDaily.com, June 21, 2004)
The state of Illinois has also approved a mental health screening program. The
Illinois legislature passed the Children’s Mental Health Act of 2003 which will provide screening for “all children ages 0-18” and “ensure appropriate and culturally
relevant assessment of your children’s social and emotional development with the use of standardized tools.” In addition, all pregnant women in Illinois are to be
screened for depression.
Dr. Karen R. Effrem, another physician and leading opponent of mandatory
screening recently stated, “Universal mental health screening and the drugging of
children, as recommended by the New Freedom Commission [presidential commission], needs to be stopped so that many thousands if not millions of children will be saved from receiving stigmatizing diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of their
lives. America’s school children should not be medicated by expensive, ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and dubious diagnoses.”
Dr. Effrem warns of the following:
-
Parental rights are unclear or non-existent under these screening programs.
-
Parents are already being coerced to put their children on psychiatric medications
and some children are dying because of it. -
Mental health screening does not prevent suicide.
-
Mental health diagnoses are “subjective” and “social constructions” as admitted by the authors of the diagnostic manuals themselves.
-
Most psychiatric medications do not work in children.
-
The side effects of these medications in children are severe.
-
The untoward influence by the pharmaceutical industry, or at least the impropriety, is
abundantly clear in two important aspects of this issue. -
Merging screening with the academic standards required by No Child Left Behind,
as is happening in Illinois, will lead to diagnosis for political reasons. School mental
health and violence prevention programs funded by NCLB and government
counterterrorism operations are already using such criteria as “homophobia” and
“defenders of the US Constitution against federal government and the UN” to label
school children and US citizens as mentally unstable and violent.
Texas first…Illinois second…and the rest of America to follow if we aren’t
successful within the next 24 to 36 hours. We’ll be calling on House members’ offices
tomorrow asking for votes in favor of Dr. Paul’s amendment to stop this forced, federal
mental-health screening.
Join concerned citizens from EdAction, Eagle Forum, Gun Owners of America, the
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Concerned Women of America,
Freedom 21, the Alliance for Human Research Protection, the International Center
for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and Texans for Safe Education to get
Dr.
Paul’s amendment passed.
One last note…if mental-health screening for every American child isn’t bad
enough, how about mandatory mental-health screening for every American adult? Yes,
that’s coming too. The final report of the President’s New Freedom Commission on
MentalHealth states, “Both children and adults will be screened for mental illnesses
during their routine physical exams.”
Kent Snyder |
The Liberty
Committee
