New York Bill Requires Psychological Screening for Schoolchildren
We just signed the petition “State Rep. Margaret Markey: Stop Mandatory Psychological Screening of our Children” on Change.org. It’s important. Will you sign it too? Here’s the link:
This petition seeks to gain your help to stop the passing of Bill A8186-2013 that would require all children attending public schools in New York to go through psychological screening as part of their required health certificate. The specific wording from the Bill is:
“EACH SUCH CERTIFICATE SHALL ALSO STATE THAT A PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINATION WAS PERFORMED AND THAT THE CHILD IS MENTALLY FIT TO PERMIT ATTENDANCE AT SCHOOL.”
You can find the bill here for more information: http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/A8186-2013
As of January 8th this bill has been referred to the Committee on Education for review. We need to let the New York Assemblywoman supporting this [Margaret Markey] know that we don’t agree with this Bill which is an invasion of the privacy of our children. We do not need our children to be given a screening potentially leading to a lifetime of fraudulent psychiatric labels and harmful psychotropic drugs.
In 2003 a report on “mental health care” presented to the federal government recommended that all 52 million American schoolchildren be screened for “mental illness,” claiming—without a shred of scientific evidence—that “early detection, assessment, and links with treatment” could “prevent mental health problems from worsening.” Already implemented in many states, screening and “intervention” is to be provided through primary health care facilities, schools, juvenile justice and child welfare—to anyone aged between 3 and 21. Millions of taxpayer dollars have already been allocated to this, which means that America’s already burgeoning numbers of children being prescribed potentially lethal psychiatric drugs could treble within a few years to 30 million.
Ten million American children are already prescribed drugs that can kill them or predispose them to later illicit drug abuse, violence or suicide.
Screening Doesn’t Prevent Suicide; Drugs Increase It!
Parents need to know that unlike medical diseases there is no x-ray, blood or other physical test to determine if a child has a “mental disorder;” that mental health screening is based on subjective questions not medical science; that parents must actively sign an informed consent form to allow any such screening; and that any informed consent form must contain the above information.
Government funding should never be used for mental health-screening programs and should be allocated, instead, to better educational facilities, teachers and tutoring to improve the literacy and educational standards of students.
Click here for more information about mental health screening.