Posted on 06/21/2004 10:19:15 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
President Bush plans to unveil next month a sweeping mental health initiative that recommends screening for every citizen and promotes the use of expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs favored by supporters of the administration.
The New Freedom Initiative, according to a progress report, seeks to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the community, rather than institutions," the British Medical Journal reported.
Critics say the plan protects the profits of drug companies at the expense of the public.
The initiative began with Bush's launch in April 2002 of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which conducted a "comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system."
The panel found that "despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for "consumers of all ages," including preschool children.
The commission said, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviors and emotional disorders."
Schools, the panel concluded, are in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools.
The commission recommended that the screening be linked with "treatment and supports," including "state-of-the-art treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions."
The Texas Medication Algorithm Project, or TMAP, was held up by the panel as a "model" medication treatment plan that "illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes."
The TMAP -- started in 1995 as an alliance of individuals from the pharmaceutical industry, the University of Texas and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas -- also was praised by the American Psychiatric Association, which called for increased funding to implement the overall plan.
But the Texas project sparked controversy when a Pennsylvania government employee revealed state officials with influence over the plan had received money and perks from drug companies who stand to gain from it.
Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General says in his whistleblower report the "political/pharmaceutical alliance" that developed the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, was behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which were "poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab."
Jones points out, according to the British Medical Journal, companies that helped start the Texas project are major contributors to Bush's election funds. Also, some members of the New Freedom Commission have served on advisory boards for these same companies, while others have direct ties to TMAP.
Eli Lilly, manufacturer of olanzapine, one of the drugs recommended in the plan, has multiple ties to the Bush administration, BMJ says. The elder President Bush was a member of Lilly's board of directors and President Bush appointed Lilly's chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, to the Homeland Security Council.
Of Lilly's $1.6 million in political contributions in 2000, 82 percent went to Bush and the Republican Party.
Another critic, Robert Whitaker, journalist and author of "Mad in America," told the British Medical Journal that while increased screening "may seem defensible," it could also be seen as "fishing for customers."
Exorbitant spending on new drugs "robs from other forms of care such as job training and shelter program," he said.
However, a developer of the Texas project, Dr. Graham Emslie, defends screening.
"There are good data showing that if you identify kids at an earlier age who are aggressive, you can intervene ... and change their trajectory."
Believe it - here's the White House page detailing it: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html
Isn't that what is done now? De-institutionalization is why many cities have a "homeless" problem.
The ones I've written, and I presume the ones you've written too, were written with the idea of conveying information, rather than promoting a spin, with the goal of concealing information (i.e., "read the ES and you'll know all you need to know, bwahahahah...")
If you were tasked with writing an ES to give to "the meat" about a draconian project, how would you handle it? (Laying aside for the moment the probability that you'd be given the agenda and told how to present it.)
It's there alright. In blood-curdling detail.
Like I said, I'll read it later.
That's what people thought about No Child Left Behind when it was still a pipe dream between George Push and then-Houston superintendent Ron Paige, in the late 1990s. I remember during the 2000 campaign Republicans saying *the same thing* - "It's just an election ploy." "Congress won't really pass that." "It will never happen," yadda yadda. Well - guess what. We now have No Child Left Behind - the biggest federal education boondoggle *ever.*
Now No Loony Left Behind is even more audacious, because it takes those *federally-controlled* schools, those teachers no one could trust because they're all 'so bad' they have to be monitored by the Feds - and turns them into *mental health screeners.*
This one is really, really bad, guys. Wake up and smell the thorazine.
By Jove I think he's got it!
Yup, you've got her pegged alright. Nice job!
So, there will be compulsory psychiatric screening for 300 million people, and everyone who doesn't measure up will be medicated forcibly? And this is to benefit drug companies that are financially friendly to President Bush?
Is that what you're saying? Is that what then Governor Bush did in Texas?
PS, I'm not reading the link right now. I want to know what YOU are saying. I'll read it later.
OMG, picking my jaw off the floor.
My dear, he just dealt your argument a direct hit to center of mass, and you thank him for it?
I've got to bookmark this and file it under "obtuse: defined".
Scary, isn't it, that some people vote?
I have read plenty of his stuff that says he will not under any circumstance vote for George Bush. If you read it all the time, you have seen it too.I can't read his articles. He is way too emotional and even sometimes hysterical in the way that he writes.
I am so tired of reading his crap.
Which is it?
I hope this isn't true.
Carolyn
And here's the specific lowdown on the "mental health" component, included only by reference in the above document. (They really don't want to go out of their way to put this stuff in front of our faces. Quite a bit of indirection involved in getting to the nugget.)
Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America
And it is also scary that some post hysterically and think they are rational.
My wife is a teacher. NCLB is an unspeakable horror.
We can certainly agree on that.
Why because teachers have to actually do their job and teach.
JMO, no wonder Ted Kennedy and the teachers unions hate it.
I asked a him a question about how my comment was interpreted by him, Don Joe.
Where do you see a thank you in that statement?
No Child Left Behind at least could look okay before we saw it put into place --- the idea of checking everyone for mental soundness and then drugging them is too far-fetched.
The border schools are now extorting all kinds of money with the No Child Left Behind by demanding and getting all kinds of federal money because due to cultural problems the kids are left behind so the US taxpayers are having to throw money at luxury schools for kids who will still drop out.
To save time it would be wise to screen the moronic Congress of The United States. That body is larded with candidates for straitjackets on both sides of the aisles.
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