New Freedom Commission
on Mental Health
Media Watchdogs Say Bush Plan for
Psychiatric Screening of Kids is a "Top Censored Story of
2006."
Thousands of Youth May be
Drugged.
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.
In April of 2002, President Bush
appointed a 22 member commission called the President's New Freedom
Commission on Mental Health in order to "identify policies that
could be implemented by Federal, State and local governments to
maximize the utility of existing resources, improve coordination of
treatments and services, and promote successful community
integration for adults with a serious mental illness and children
with a serious emotional disturbance. Members of this
commission include physicians in the mental health field and at
least one (Robert N. Postlethwait) former employee of pharmaceutical
giant Eli Lilly and Co.
In July of 2003 the commission
published the results of their study. They found that mental health
disorders often go undiagnosed and recommended to the President that
there should be more comprehensive screening for mental illnesses
for people of all ages,
including pre-school age children. In
accordance with their findings, the commission recommended that
schools were in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students
and 6 million adult employees of our nation's
schools.
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." Parents,
children, and their private doctors should decide whether a child
has mental health problems, not government bureaucrats. That this
even needs to be stated is a sign of just how obedient our society
has become toward government. What kind of free people would turn
their children's most intimate health matters over to government
strangers? How in the world have we allowed government to become so
powerful and arrogant that it assumes it can force children to
accept psychiatric treatment whether parents object or not?
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.
The following article, Medicating
Aliah, found in Mother Jones
Magazine is a good example of how devastating the results of forced
mental screening is on children & their
families.
When state mental health officials fall under the
influence of Big Pharma, the burden falls on captive patients. Like
this 13-year-old girl.
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.
sources: truthnews.net,
worldaily.com
Disclaimer: The
information posted on this website is for educational purposes only.
We are not licensed Medical Doctors & do not intend to
substitute the advice of professionals.
The information presented is based on our opinions on the
benefits of alternative treatment vs. drugging for treatment. Some
of our sources include websites of licensed Medical Doctors &
websites of others sharing our opinions. Any mention on this site of
alternative treatment & healing through natural remedies,
organic or herbal, have not been evaluated by the FDA.
Again, some information on this site is based solely on
personal experiences & personal opinions & is protected
under Free Speech.
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