Doctors Group Opposes Mandatory Mental Health Tests for Kids

NewsMax ^ | 11/11/04 | Dave Eberhart

[wagglebee]

Under new law being considered, the federal government would require that every child in America undergo psychological screening and receive recommended treatment, including drug therapies.

Next week the Senate re-convenes to consider an omnibus appropriations bill that includes funding for grants to implement mandatory universal mental health screening for almost 60 million children, pregnant women, and adults through schools and pre-schools.

But officials of the respected Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS) decry what they see as “a dangerous scheme that will heap even more coercive pressure on parents to medicate children with potentially dangerous side effects.”

One of the most “dangerous side effects” from anti-depressants commonly prescribed to children is suicide, regarding which AAPS added, “Further, even the government’s own task force has concluded that mental health screening does little to prevent suicide.”

The bill would fund initiatives of the “New Freedom Commission on Mental Health,” including a program designed to subject every school age child in the country to psychological testing and recommendations for treatment. The House has already voted to appropriate $20 million for the plan, and the Senate will be considering whether to bump it up to $44 million.

Last September, AAPS lifetime member Rep. Ron Paul, M.D., R-Tex., tried to stop the plan by offering an amendment to the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Act for FY 2005. The amendment received 95 “yes” votes, but it failed to pass.

Paul tells NewsMax: “At issue is the fundamental right of parents to decide what medical treatment is appropriate for their children. The notion of federal bureaucrats ordering potentially millions of youngsters to take psychotropic drugs like Ritalin strikes an emotional chord with American parents, who are sick of relinquishing more and more parental control to government.

“Once created, federal programs are nearly impossible to eliminate. Anyone who understands bureaucracies knows they assume more and more power incrementally. A few scattered state programs over time will be replaced by a federal program implemented in a few select cities. Once the limited federal program is accepted, it will be expanded nationwide. Once in place throughout the country, the screening program will become mandatory.

“Soviet communists attempted to paint all opposition to the state as mental illness. It now seems our own federal government wants to create a therapeutic nanny state, beginning with schoolchildren. It’s not hard to imagine a time 20 or 30 years from now when government psychiatrists stigmatize children whose religious, social, or political values do not comport with those of the politically correct, secular state.

“American parents must do everything they can to remain responsible for their children’s well-being. If we allow government to become intimately involved with our children’s minds and bodies, we will have lost the final vestiges of parental authority. Strong families are the last line of defense against an overreaching bureaucratic state.”

“Congressman Paul and several of his colleagues will never give up,” adds an AAPS spokesperson. “He and his colleagues have drafted a letter to Chairman Ralph Regula, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Appropriations, asking for his help.”

The letter states in part:

“We respectfully request that the following language be included in the final committee report on the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005, or any report accompanying an omnibus bill containing the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations for fiscal year 2005:

‘None of the funds made available for State incentive grants for transformation should be used for any programs of mandatory or universal mental-health screening that performs mental-health screening on anyone under 18 years of age without the express, written permission of the parents or legal guardians of each individual involved.’”

By way of background: in April 2002, President George W. Bush created the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. Its objective was to enhance mental health services to those in need.

Among other things, the commission concluded that there is a need to search for mental disorders – especially in children – and the best way to do this was with mandatory mental health screening for everyone, starting with preschoolers.

According to the Commission's 2003 report: “Quality screening and early intervention should occur in readily accessible, low-stigma settings, such as primary health care facilities and schools.”

The report goes on to say: “...the extent, severity, and far-reaching consequences make it imperative that our Nation adopt a comprehensive, systemic approach to improving the mental health status of children.”

However, critics of the plan suggest that the random testing of millions of people makes little sense to anyone but the drug companies that will stand to profit from the potential customers.

The New Freedom Commission’s proposed treatment programs are based on the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP). TMAP, which was first used in Texas in 1996 and has since expanded to other states, is a set of very specific medication recommendations – most of them new, expensive, psychotropic drugs.

Despite the criticisms, the White House has remained solid behind the testing initiative, noting that the commission found that schools are in a “key position” to influence the phenomena of young children being “expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviors and emotional disorders.”

But detractors are just as adamant that “problem” children in schools are readily identifiable, making the universal testing an unnecessary tool that does nothing but infringe on a parent’s right to make decisions regarding their child’s welfare.

[wagglebee]

That Congress would even consider this disgusts me!

[jocon307]

Where did this commie/facist crap come from and were do we call to complain?

They don't have to look for mentally ill people, they are lounging about the gutters of all our cities. They should get THOSE poor people some help.

Sometimes I don't understand America. You can't smoke, you shouldn't drink, heaven forbid you smoke a joint, but we should all be taking heavy duty mind and mood altering prescription drugs. As a child of the 70s I gotta admit, I don't get it.

[wagglebee]

I did A LOT of "experimenting" when I was in high school and college, but this is absurd. The leftists want every kid in America to be a medicated zombie. And it is all just a tool they are using to indoctrinate America's youth.

[expatguy]

Over my dead body.

[Coleus]

Shouldn't we contact President Bush who started this Nonsense?  Our mental health system is fine and it should be left up to the states as to what to do with their citizens.

President Says U.S. Must Make Commitment to Mental Health Care
      View the President's Remarks
     Listen to the President's Remarks

Mailing Address The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Phone Numbers Comments:   202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 FAX:             202-456-2461	TTY/TDD Comments:      202-456-6213 Visitors Office: 202-456-2121

E-Mail

President George W. Bush: president@whitehouse.gov
Vice President Richard Cheney: vice.president@whitehouse.gov

Psychiatry and the State (Excerpt)
by Dennis Behreandt

The federal government plans a new role in delivering mental health care.  Historically, however, governments have used psychiatric techniques for harm rather than good.

On April 29, 2002, President George W. Bush issued an executive order creating a new commission charged with finding ways to “improve America’s mental health service delivery system.” One year later, the Orwellian-sounding New Freedom Commission on Mental Health released its findings.  Its final report recommended mental health screening for all Americans and, in a proposal that should alarm parents everywhere, recommended that the nation’s schools be used to assess the mental health of all schoolchildren.

President George W. Bush wants to have  American citizens, beginning with all school age children, examined by psychiatrists.

"The New Freedom Initiative is a plan to screen the entire U.S. population for mental illness and to provide a cradle-to-grave continuum of services for those identified as either mentally ill or at risk of becoming so. Under the plan, schools would become hubs of the screening process, not only for children, but for their parents and teachers. There are even components aimed at senior citizens, pregnant women, and new mothers.

"In April 2002, President Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health to conduct a 'comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system.' The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003, chief among them being that schools are in a 'key position' to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at educational facilities."

This Draconian federal program began in Texas while G.W. Bush was Governor. It was called the Texas Medication Algorithm Project as an alliance between the pharmaceutical industry, the University of Texas, and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas. Now that Bush is President, he has begun implementing the program at the national level.

[Indie]

The fact that the POTUS supports it disgusts me. Correct me if I am wrong but I sure thought on the previous thread a few months back, that it said he did.

[Dozer3]

This is a waste of taxpayer dollars and it's intrusive. It's no secret that a pillar of communism is to nix the parents and put the state in their place as the ultimate authority. The feds are going too far.

[wagglebee]

I think you are right. How any sensible person can hear about this and not be reminded immediately of Hitler is beyond me. It is textbook eugenics, which has been a tool of the left for the last hundred years.
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

[SauronOfMordor]

If this passes, look for school psychologists decreeing that being conservative or Christian is a mental illness that mandates massive chemical intervention

[Fishing-guy]

Personally, I am not scared of psychological screening, if it is done correctly. However, I don't see how we could afford it. We already have all these mentally ill homeless problems, and we can't even afford to take care of them now.

[wagglebee]

I have read that the association of pediatricians (not quite sure what their official name is) views a handgun or rifle in the home (that is legally owned by the child's parents) to be a cause for concern. They actually ask children if there are guns in the house.

[raybbr]

Most people on this site will think this is a program started by liberals.

[snopercod]

The Myth of Mental Illness

By Thomas S. Szasz (1960)

The term "mental illness" is widely used to describe something which is very different than a disease of the brain. Many people today take it· for granted that living is an arduous process. Its hardship for modern man, moreover, derives not so much from a struggle for biological survival as from the stresses and strains inherent in the social intercourse of complex human personalities. In this context, the notion of mental illness is used to identify or describe some feature of an individual's so-called personality. Mental illness -- as a deformity of the personality, so to speak -- is then regarded as the cause of the human disharmony. It is implicit in this view that social intercourse between people is regarded as something inherently harmonious, its disturbance being due solely to the presence of "mental illness" in many people. This is obviously fallacious reasoning, for it makes the abstraction "mental illness" into a cause, even though this abstraction was created in the first place to serve only as a shorthand expression for certain types of human behavior. It now becomes necessary to ask: "What hinds of behavior are regarded as indicative of mental illness, and by whom?"

[wagglebee]

They will never admit it, but I think the goal of the left is to see to it that EVERY child in America is diagnosed as needing Ritalin (or some similar mind-altering drug). Creating a nation of zombies will enable to promote their agenda with far greater ease.

[softengine]

The New Freedom Commission’s proposed treatment programs are based on the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP). TMAP, which was first used in Texas in 1996 and has since expanded to other states, is a set of very specific medication recommendations – most of them new, expensive, psychotropic drugs.

Oh yeah, Texas is a real gem of an example of this type of program: Foster Kids on Mind-Altering Drugs?

Yep. A real gem.    /extreme sarcasm off

[Fishing-guy]

Who are behind this?

It seems that the Republicans are pushing this.

[Fishing-guy]

The article points out a problem in this country. There are not enough child psychiatrists around.

Doctors from other specialties, who are not trained in children mental health, are prescribing psychiatric medications instead of prescribing a comprehensive treatment plan.

[finallyatexan]

I agree with you - anyone under the age of 18 has to have parental permission - and what if these screenings had been done years ago in Columbine could the shootings have been prevented?
Also by checking people early perhaps we could identify possibilities of homelessness before it happens.
I don't know just a thought.

[12 Gauge Mossberg]

Well, we need to elect more Republicans so this won't happen.

[wagglebee]

Bush is one of the ones promoting this!