Posted on 07/04/2004 6:39:03 PM PDT by SkyRat
A sweeping mental health initiative will be unveiled by President George W Bush in July. The plan promises to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the community, rather than institutions," according to a March 2004 progress report entitled New Freedom Initiative (www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html). While some praise the plan's goals, others say it protects the profits of drug companies at the expense of the public.
Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a "comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system." The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003. Bush instructed more than 25 federal agencies to develop an implementation plan based on those recommendations.
The president's commission found that "despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for "consumers of all ages," including preschool children. According to the commission, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviours and emotional disorders." Schools, wrote the commission, are in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools.
The commission also recommended "Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports" including "state-of-the-art treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions." The commission commended the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) as a "model" medication treatment plan that "illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes."
Dr Darrel Regier, director of research at the American Psychiatric Association (APA), lauded the president's initiative and the Texas project model saying, "What's nice about TMAP is that this is a logical plan based on efficacy data from clinical trials."
He said the association has called for increased funding for implementation of the overall plan.
But the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, sparked off controversy when Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, revealed that key officials with influence over the medication plan in his state received money and perks from drug companies with a stake in the medication algorithm (15 May, p1153). He was sacked this week for speaking to the BMJ and the New York Times.
The Texas project 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. The project was funded by a Robert Wood Johnson grant—and by several drug companies.
Mr Jones told the BMJ that the same "political/pharmaceutical alliance" that generated the Texas project was behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which, according to his whistleblower report, 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" (http://psychrights.org/Drugs/AllenJonesTMAPJanuary20.pdf).
Larry D Sasich, research associate with Public Citizen in Washington, DC, told the BMJ that studies in both the United States and Great Britain suggest that "using the older drugs first makes sense. There's nothing in the labeling of the newer atypical antipsychotic drugs that suggests they are superior in efficacy to haloperidol [an older "typical" antipsychotic]. There has to be an enormous amount of unnecessary expenditures for the newer drugs."
Drug companies have contributed three times more to the campaign of George Bush, seen here campaigning in Florida, than to that of his rival John Kerry
Credit: GERALD HERBERT/AP
Olanzapine (trade name Zyprexa), one of the atypical antipsychotic drugs recommended as a first line drug in the Texas algorithm, grossed $4.28bn (£2.35bn; 3.56bn) worldwide in 2003 and is Eli Lilly's top selling drug. A 2003 New York Times article by Gardiner Harris reported that 70% of olanzapine sales are paid for by government agencies, such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Eli Lilly, manufacturer of olanzapine, has multiple ties to the Bush administration. George Bush Sr was a member of Lilly's board of directors and Bush Jr appointed Lilly's chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, to a seat on the Homeland Security Council. Lilly made $1.6m in political contributions in 2000—82% of which went to Bush and the Republican Party.
Jones points out that the companies that helped to start up the Texas project have been, and still are, big contributors to the election funds of George W Bush. In addition, some members of the New Freedom Commission have served on advisory boards for these same companies, while others have direct ties to the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.
Bush was the governor of Texas during the development of the Texas project, and, during his 2000 presidential campaign, he boasted of his support for the project and the fact that the legislation he passed expanded Medicaid coverage of psychotropic drugs.
Bush is the clear front runner when it comes to drug company contributions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), manufacturers of drugs and health products have contributed $764 274 to the 2004 Bush campaign through their political action committees and employees—far outstripping the $149 400 given to his chief rival, John Kerry, by 26 April.
Drug companies have fared exceedingly well under the Bush administration, according to the centre's spokesperson, Steven Weiss.
The commission's recommendation for increased screening has also been questioned. Robert Whitaker, journalist and author of Mad in America, says that while increased screening "may seem defensible," it could also be seen as "fishing for customers," and that exorbitant spending on new drugs "robs from other forms of care such as job training and shelter programmes."
But Dr Graham Emslie, who helped develop the Texas project, 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."
Nothing. We'll have arrived at a state of total government nirvana. Complete mind supremacy.
"if you identify kids at an earlier age who are aggressive"
Heck, I can save the government a whole lot of money. Just look for the kids who have no parents who give a crap about them. That would make me pretty angry and ready to do something, anything, to get some attention.
Yes!
I have a book on it that goes through it line by line and compares it to citations from Soviet documents. You are correct. I was being generous.
No thanks, just leave me alone, with some "kind" bud! I will get along just fine!
i would suggest no one fill these things out if they do the screening.
i was pointing out that this is not hard to do technically, because some people thought the gov was not capable of doing it.
it has to be stopped politically.
did someone just make the whole thing up?
Yep, it's idiotic. This money would be better off spent on people who have already proven they don't have the mental ability to survive in the real world--putting homeless in mental institutes.
I'm not sure what good this screening would do anyway. There is a LOT of latitude given to the mentally ill before they can be declared wards of the state. You have to practically murder someone before you can be declared insane.
A friend's mother went insane and put her family through hell, she would wreck things, try to sic the police on her daughter for imaginary offenses, wreck cars all the time even though she failed the driver's license test, and so on. The family begged courts to force her into a mental institute but the psychologists always evaluated her as "borderline insane". I don't remember the event that finally convinced the courts to declare her insane but it was pretty extreme.
This has been debunked?
Url for that?
Or can you sum up the arguments?
Anything would be helpful.
Thanks for your links.
And I found this article from AP:
Mental Illnesses Bring Detention for Some Youths
Report finds many juveniles are `warehoused' in facilities
by Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Thousands of mentally ill youths are unnecessarily put in juvenile detention centers to await mental health treatment, a House committee reported Wednesday.
Centers usually are not equipped to treat mental illness, and in some cases the youths have not been charged with a crime, said the report by the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee.
"The use of juvenile detention facilities to house youth waiting for community mental health services is widespread and a serious national problem," said the report, which found that two-thirds of juvenile detention facilities hold youths who are waiting for mental health treatment. "This misuse of detention centers as holding areas for mental health treatment is unfair to youth, undermines their health, disrupts the function of detention centers and is costly to society."
The report was prepared at the request of California Rep. Henry Waxman, the House Government Reform Committee's top Democrat, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
"Thousands of youth who are in need of community mental health services are stuck in jail until these services become available," Waxman said. "This is deplorable. Congress must ensure that our children have access to the mental health care that they need."
Collins scheduled a hearing on the issue Wednesday in which Waxman was testifying along with experts on mental health law, youth behavior and juvenile detention.
The report identified 698 juvenile detention facilities in the United States, defined as correctional facilities holding people age 21 and younger awaiting charges or trial or recently tried. Seventy-five percent of the facilities, or 524, responded to the survey, including facilities from every state but New Hampshire. The survey covered six months, Jan. 1, 2003, to June 30, 2003.
The report did not attempt to determine why so many youths who needed mental health treatment were being put in juvenile detention but said administrators blamed the lack of other treatment facilities.
One detention center administrator from Louisiana wrote, "We appear to be warehousing youths with mental illnesses due to lack of mental health services."
In researching this issue (the claim that Bush has some strange mental health screening plan in the works), (after having been refered to this thread from another that seemed to be a duplicate of it, which is now pulled as it's reviewed), I came across your post here.
As far as I understand, Goals 2000 is no longer an active government program, as all its funding was yanked a few years ago. Source
Comments? I'd be interested to hear yours, as I've hear others talk about Goals 2000 spending and influence in the past. When I heard about it and did some reasearch into it, I found the article above from the Home School Legal Defense Association. It would appear to indicate Goals 2000 is no more, but again, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Thanks,
Luckily, Goals 2000 was permanently defunded by the Federal Government in 2002, as part of the "No Child Left Behind Act". My only concern is how much of the mechanism that was put in place has been dismantled at the state and local level? And, how much of this new program is just a reincarnation of some of the more troubling parts of Goals 2000?
It was hard to find anything definitive on this subject from what information is out there. My suspicion is that certain states may still have some or all of the original Goals 2000 still in place. The large bureaucracies that run the state education systems move very slowly and usually not in a direction that we would like to see. Just because the federal government is not funding this component of a given state's education budget does not mean that all the parts of Goals 2000 have been removed from that state's system.
I suspect that if the Goals 2000 system was fully integrated into their education system it would not easily be extricated from it. Some states may see it as simpler to just leave it and try to then integrate Bush's new "No child left behind" plan into it. Also, some state education officials may like it enough to retain the parts they like. I did see some articles in my original research into this issue that stated that in a number of states it was still in place in one form or another.
I will try to find those references for you in the next few days. I am on the road for the next few weeks but should be able to find some of the info for you.
Congress, Judges excluded.
We're going to find a high positive correlation between someone having a mental illness and someone being registered as a 'Rat.
Teacher: Now class before we get started today here is your "smart" pill and your juice.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.....
Kids: If we're good can we have some happy pills too?
Teacher: Of course you can! I've got several in all pretty colors for you to pick from.
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