Mental-health screening of children

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 afternoon 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.”

1. Parental rights are unclear or non-existent under these screening programs. 2. Parents are already being coerced to put their children on psychiatric medications and some children are dying because of it. 3. Mental health screening does not prevent suicide. 4. Mental health diagnoses are “subjective” and “social constructions” as admitted by the authors of the diagnostic manuals themselves. 5. Most psychiatric medications do not work in children. 6. The side effects of these medications in children are severe. 7. The untoward influence by the pharmaceutical industry, or at least the impropriety, is abundantly clear in two important aspects of this issue. 8. 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 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, and the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology 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 Mental Health states, “Both children and adults will be screened for mental illnesses during their routine physical exams.”

After you’ve sent your message, please forward this page to your family and friends.

And this is all of the stuff on "mental" I could find in a search of H.R.5006:

National Institute of Mental Health

For carrying out section 301 and title IV of the Public Health Service Act with respect to mental health, $1,420,609,000.

[...]

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services

For carrying out titles V and XIX of the Public Health Service Act with respect to substance abuse and mental health services, the Protection and Advocacy for Mentally Ill Individuals Act, and section 301 of the Public Health Service Act with respect to program management, $3,270,360,000: Provided, That in addition to amounts provided herein, the following amounts shall be available from amounts available under section 241 of the Public Health Service Act:

(1) $79,200,000 to carry out subpart II of title XIX of the Public Health Service Act to fund section 1935(b) technical assistance, national data, data collection and evaluation activities, and further that the total available under this Act for section 1935(b) activities shall not exceed 5 percent of the amounts appropriated for subpart II of title XIX;

(2) $21,803,000 to carry out subpart I of part B of title XIX of the Public Health Services Act to fund section 1920(b) technical assistance, national data, data collection and evaluation activities, and further that the total available under this Act for section 1920(b) activities shall not exceed 5 percent of the amounts appropriated for subpart I of part B of title XIX;

(3) $16,000,000 to carry out national surveys on drug abuse; and

(4) $4,300,000 for substance abuse treatment programs.

The following is a list of Republicans who voted against the Ron Paul
Amendment (Amendment to stop funding for "New Freedom Initiative"
universal mental screening). You'll see a list of no-votes below it.

All of the Democrats were "noes" or no-votes, except one who voted in
favor of Ron Paul's Amendment, Taylor (MS).

...first, the "noes" (against Amendment to stop funding for "New Freedom
Initiative," which seeks to eventually bring universal mental screenings,
which will result in many new prescriptions for psychiatric medications
for children). These are the bad guys, folks, and so are those on the list
after the following.

Noes:

Alexander
Bachus
Baker
Barton (TX)
Bass
Beauprez
Blunt
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Bradley (NH)
Brown (SC)
Burr
Buyer
Calvert
Capito
Carter
Castle
Crenshaw
Cunningham
Davis, Tom
Diaz-Balart, L.
Diaz-Balart, M.
Dreier
Dunn
Ehlers
Emerson
English
Ferguson
Foley
Fossella
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Gerlach
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gingrey
Granger
Hall
Harris
Hastings (WA)
Hayworth
Hobson
Houghton
Hulshof
Hyde
Isakson
Issa
Jenkins
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, Sam
Keller
Kelly
King (NY)
Kirk
Kline
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Latham
LaTourette
Leach
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
LoBiondo
McCrery
McHugh
McKeon
Mica
Murphy
Ney
Northup
Nunes
Nussle
Osborne
Oxley
Pearce
Peterson (PA)
Pickering
Platts
Porter
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Putnam
Radanovich
Regula
Rehberg
Renzi
Reynolds
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Ros-Lehtinen
Saxton
Shaw
Shays
Sherwood
Shimkus
Simmons
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Sweeney
Taylor (NC)
Thomas
Tiberi
Turner (OH)
Walden (OR)
Walsh
Wamp
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
Wicker
Wilson (NM)
Wilson (SC)
Wolf
Young (FL)

"Not Voting:"

Ballenger
Cannon
Goss
Greenwood
Istook
Lucas (OK)
McInnis
Moran (KS)
Nethercutt
Quinn
Schrock
Shuster
Tauzin
Toomey
Young (AK)

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