Citizens Commission on Human Rights of St. Louis

New Initiative Launches Police State Under Guise of Mental Health

by Beverly Eakman, Author, Educator
Former Editor-In-Chief, NASA’s Newspaper (JSC)

It’s zero hour in America. Do you know where your country went?

Now that America’s education system and parenting “experts” have brainwashed a generation of now-grown schoolchildren-cum-parents into believing that what we once called personality quirks, character flaws and moral issues are, in essence, mental disorders, politicians have taken the ball and run with it. Law enforcement agencies and the judicial system are in the process of adopting Stalinist and Mao-inspired methods of controlling dissidents at home.

Only a few, short years ago, what was held up as independent thinking, speaking one’s mind, and robust dialogue is now decried as a prelude to terrorism. Our nation’s leaders are pulling off communist-style thought-control by implying that any words uttered in print or out loud that runs contrary to “accepted wisdom” (and that can change in a “New York Minute”) is the result of mental illness.

Click here to read more.

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.

Drugs Cause Violence, Suicide and Death

Ten million American children are already prescribed drugs that can kill them or predispose them to later illicit drug abuse, violence or suicide.

§         Antidepressants are commonly prescribed as a result of mental health screening, yet dozens of international drug regulatory agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), warn that these drugs cause anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania (abnormal excitement) and mania (psychosis characterized by exalted feelings and delusions of grandeur).

§         In October 2004, the FDA ordered its most stringent “black box” warning that antidepressants also cause suicide in children and adolescents. In November 2005, it ordered labeling changes to the antidepressant, Effexor, warning that it could cause “homicidal ideation.”

§         In 2006, the FDA also revealed that stimulants—prescribed to 6 million American children for so-called “learning” or “behavioral disorders”—could cause hallucinations, psychosis, strokes, heart attacks and death. Already there have been 25 deaths. The public was also warned that there had been 45 child deaths from antipsychotic drugs, largely prescribed for the same “disorders.”

The Prescribed Drugs Behind School Shootings

§         At least 8 out of 13 school shootings have been committed by teens taking these prescribed mind-altering drugs. The medical information of the other teen killers is not publicly available.

§         False claims have been made that screening can prevent suicides. Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America, says, “They’re pulling numbers out of thin air—falsely presuming that this crisis is about lack of access to drugs and calling for government to provide more and more of what many of us believe is the wrong kind of treatment.”

Screening Doesn’t Prevent Suicide; Drugs Increase It

§         Psychiatrists claim that antidepressants decrease suicide, but according to a Journal of the American Medical Association study, “Despite a dramatic increase in treatment, no significant decrease occurred in suicidal thoughts, plans, gestures, or attempts in the United States during the 1990s.”

§         The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention, said it had “found no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality.”

§         A 2005 study by Dr. David Healy and Graham Aldred from the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, Cardiff University, Wales, reported that the studies of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants show that they increase the risk of suicide.

TeenScreen Lacks Reliability and Science

§         One of the recommended screening programs for schools is called TeenScreen™. Dr. David Shaffer, the psychiatrist that developed this, admitted that use of this screening method could mean 84 non-suicidal teens could be referred for further evaluation for every 16 youths “correctly identified.” Kelly Patricia O’Meara, journalist and former congressional staff, warns: “Since when does an 84% failure rate equate to a reliable scientific test? In other words, based on [Dr.] Shaffer’s study of his own test, 84 students out of 100 will be incorrectly identified as suffering from a specific mental illness. One has to wonder if parents of America are informed of this astonishing statistic as part of information to consider when having to decide whether or not to allow the mental health screening test.”

§         The subjective questions in TeenScreen include, “Has there been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just weren’t interested in anything?” and “Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good looking or as smart as other people?” Based on the outcome, a further questionnaire looks for 18 psychiatric disorders, based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

§         The DSM is noted for its lack of scientific credibility and its unreliability. In April 2005, a study published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics also determined there were undisclosed financial relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists involved in voting on which “mental disorders” should be included in the DSM. Researchers Lisa Cosgrove, a psychologist from the University of Massachusetts and Sheldon Krimsky, a Tuft University professor, found that drug companies funded 100% of psychiatrists involved in the panels determining “mood disorders,” “depression” and “psychotic disorders,” which account for more than $20 billion in drug sales. Drug companies also fund TeenScreen testing of students.

Parental Consent and Government Funding

§         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, and that any “informed consent” form must obtain 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.

For more information visit http://www.cchrstl.org/screening.shtml

The Marketing of Madness–Are We All Insane?
There is no money in “normal”

This is the story of the high-income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit center.

But appearances are deceiving.

How valid are psychiatrists’ diagnoses–and how safe are their drugs?

Psychiatrists tell us that the way to fix unwanted behavior is by
altering brain chemistry with a pill.

But unlike a mainstream medical drug like insulin, psychotropic
medications have no measurable target illness to correct, and can upset the very delicate balance of chemical processes the body needs to run smoothly.

Nevertheless, psychiatrists and drug companies have used these drugs to create a huge and lucrative market niche.

And they’ve done this by naming more and more unwanted behaviors as “medical disorders” requiring psychiatric medication.

But should these really be called diseases?

So the question is:

How did psychotropic drugs, with no target illness, no known curative
powers and a long and extensive list of side effects, become the go-to
treatment for every kind of psychological distress?

And how did the psychiatrists espousing these drugs come to dominate the field of mental treatment?

Click here to preview this new documentary video.

There are dozens of organizations that are objecting to provisions in the U.S. health care reform bills. As the primary mental health watchdog organization, CCHR has been hard at work identifying the specific mental health provisions in these bills so we can inform the public of the very real risks of various aspects of these bills that clearly are designed to benefit the psycho/pharmaceutical industry, not the general public.

To read CCHR’s analysis of the House Bill and two Senate Health Care Reform bills (which will soon be merged into one Senate bill), and to find out where all of this is heading before a final bill/vote is completed, click here.

Army Psychiatrist Kills 12, Wounds 38

An Army psychiatrist about to be shipped overseas allegedly opened fire at the Fort Hood, Texas, Army post Thursday, November 5, 2009 on a rampage that killed 12 people and left 38 wounded in the worst mass shooting ever at a military base in the United States.

The psychiatrist was identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old, eight-year veteran from Virginia. The shooting occurred at the Soldier Readiness Center where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening.

Hasan may have been treating himself with psychotropic medications. Psychiatrists in general have a history of “self-medication” because of the easy access they have to psychotropic drugs. It is possible that the Major was taking one of these drugs that carry warnings of increased risk of violence and suicide attached to their use; it is important for those investigating this crime to find out if he was taking or withdrawing from any psychiatric drugs, or if he was receiving any other form of psychiatric treatment. For more information about the side effects of psychotropic drugs, click here.

This is not the first such incident of violence or suicide in the U.S. military.

Antidepressants Cause Suicide and Violence in Soldiers

A sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants, according to a June, 2008 report in Time Magazine. The psychiatric drugs prescribed to soldiers are known to have side effects that include violence and suicide.

According to the army, in 2007 17% of combat troops in Afghanistan were taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills. In the past year one-third of marines in combat zones were taking psychiatric drugs. The army confirms that since 2002 the number of suicide attempts has increased six-fold. And more than 128 soldiers killed themselves last year.

Last year the rate of suicide in the military exceeded that of the general population, and was the highest since the Army began tracking it in the 1980s. In May, 2009 a U.S. soldier allegedly killed five other military personnel and wounded three at Camp Liberty, a U.S. base just outside Baghdad. The shooting took place at a stress clinic, where soldiers suffering mental problems can go for treatment or counseling.

On July 22, 2009 the US Senate approved an amendment (SA 1475 page:S7416) proposed by Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) to the 2010 defense authorization bill (S. 1390) that would order an independent study by the National Institute of Mental Health on the potential relationship between suicide or suicide attempts and the use of antidepressants, anti-anxiety and other behavior-modifying prescription drugs.

The use of psychiatric drugs escalates when, and only when, the psychopharmaceutical industry targets new markets to increase profits. Antidepressants are a hoax — a hoax that is killing members of our armed services.

Watch the video documentary The Marketing of Madness – Are We All Insane?; this is the definitive documentary on psychotropic drugs and how the psychiatrists market madness. Here is the story of the high income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit center. Digging deep beneath the corporate veneer, this three-part documentary exposes the truth behind the slick marketing schemes and scientific deceit that conceal a dangerous and often deadly sales campaign.

The newly-forged 1990-page “Affordable Health Care for America Act” (H.R.3962) drafted by the U.S. House of Representatives is filled with mental health provisions intended to prop up psychiatry as well as the pharmaceutical industry with billions in future income.

Key mental health components of this House bill include: The Mothers Act, school based health clinics for mental health screening/treatment of children, mental health parity (psycho/pharma industry billing initiative) and more.

The MOTHERS Act
The bill includes the language of the MOTHERS Act, to “expand treatment for postpartum conditions” and calls for the development of “improved screening and diagnostic techniques,” but makes no provisions to ensure any entities doing such research are free from conflicts of interest or pharmaceutical funding.

For example, Screening for Mental Health, Inc., and its sub-organization Signs of Suicide, who heavily promote and conduct mental health screening, received $4,985,925 from pharmaceutical companies prior to 2008, and ten leading psychiatric researchers have been exposed in the last year for failing to disclose millions of dollars in pharmaceutical payments.

Yet this bill contains no provisions for full disclosure of conflicts of interest for any “entity” that could receive federal taxpayer funded grants, do research or promotional campaigns – such as the provision in the bill calling for a national PR campaign using TV, radio public and other public service announcements to urge women be screened and seek treatment for postpartum depression.

The bill also calls for “clinical research” for the development of new treatments (drugs), but again, no guidelines for ensuring that any researchers/research entities are free from pharmaceutical funding or conflicts of interest. [Section 2529, Page 1418]

Mental Health Parity
The bill mandates Mental Health Parity, or equal insurance coverage for mental disorders as what are covered for physical diseases, whether under their regular health insurance or whether a person gets their new coverage through the Health Insurance Exchange.

Psychiatric patients are traditionally “cured” when their insurance benefits run out. In this bill, those benefits never run out. Considering there are no medical tests to verify the existence of any psychiatric disorder, and without anything other than a psychiatrist’s opinion about whether or not the person’s “illness” is “cured,” this legislation becomes nothing more than taxpayer funded billions to the psycho/pharmaceutical industry who will continue their jihad of mass drugging of Americans.

This provision could easily encompass all 374 diagnoses in psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, covering everything from Phase of Life Problem to Arithmetic Disorder.  [Section 214, Page 100]

Home Visitation Programs for Families with Young Children or Families Expecting Children
The bill creates a home visitation program for families with young children or which are expecting children or who have certain “risk factors.” The program provides assessments regarding matters of “age appropriate behaviors,” for children, prevention of family violence and referral to outside services.  [Section 1904, Page 1177]

School Based Health Clinics
The bill includes funding for School Based Health Clinics that will include subjective psychiatric mental health screening (called mental health assessments) of children, and “referral to a continuum of services including emergency psychiatric care, community support programs, inpatient care, and outpatient programs” as part of their “comprehensive primary health services.” This is a direct feeder line for the psycho/pharmaceutical industry directly into our schools. [Section 2511, Page 1352]

Wellness Program Grants for Small Employers
The grants in the bill serve as an incentive for employers to include “mental health” as part of the Wellness Program Grants to businesses. Part of the program entails a “Behavioral Change Component” that encourages “healthy living through counseling” and may include programs relating to “tobacco use, obesity, stress management, depression and mental health.” [Section 112, Page 67]

Federally Qualified Behavioral Health Centers
The bill creates new “Federally Qualified Behavioral Health Centers” and in order for existing community mental health centers to qualify, they have to provide, among other things, “mental health screening, assessment, and diagnosis,” as well as “outpatient clinic mental health services, including screening, assessment, diagnosis, psychotherapy and medication,” in addition to “crisis mental health services including 24-hour mobile crisis teams.”  [Section 2513, Page 1367]

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Your voice needs to be heard in Washington on this outrageous bill. Call, fax, or email your Representative and tell them that you are opposed to the above points in the Health Care Reform bill.

To find your Representative and get their contact information, go to http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt to look them up (you need to enter your zip code). You can also call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Click here to watch video

featuring G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature from Jekyll Island, a critically acclaimed book about the U.S. Federal Reserve — on Congressman Ron Paul’s “Reading List for a Free and Prosperous America”.

PBS News just reported on how Chinese dissidents, whistleblowers and government petitioners are being labeled “mentally ill,” incarcerated in psychiatric wards and subjected to electroshock — a tactic reminiscent of Soviet Russia and the alliance between psychiatry and the police state.

The marriage of psychiatry with communist/socialist and police state regimes has spanned countries across the globe as an effective means to deal with political dissension. These practices are not limited to Russia, China, Cuba or Uzbekistan, all of which have recently employed similar psychiatric incarceration of citizens for political protest.

In the UK, a specialized unit called the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre has been granted the authority to incarcerate anyone who has given “inappropriate or threatening communications” to a member of government into a psychiatric ward. The assessment teams are made up of police, psychiatrists and psychologists who have been given the authority to evaluate, accuse and detain anyone against threat into a mental facility — indefinitely.

If you think this couldn’t happen in the U.S., think again.

Click here to watch video

More than 4 million children in the U.S. alone have been labeled with ADHD and put on drugs documented by the FDA to cause tics, stunted growth, heart attack, stroke and sudden death. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classifies Ritalin, Concerta and other ADHD drugs in the same class of highly addictive drugs as cocaine, morphine and opium.

Psychiatric drugging of kids is big business. ADHD drugs sales alone generate $3.1 billion a year. Parents need to be informed that not only is the diagnoses of ADHD completely subjective (a child fidgets, stares out the window, forgets his homework and he can be diagnosed ADHD) but that there are non-drug solutions for solving children’s problems of behavior, attention and learning. Parents have a right to this information.

Dr. Mary Ann Block, Medical Director & Founder of the Block Center, and author of No More ADHD is our featured blog/video interview this week: click here .

Click here to watch video

Psychiatrist Colin Ross, author of
The CIA Doctors and Military Mind Control exposes the longstanding relationship between the CIA, the military and psychiatry in mind control experiments including the use of LSD, psychiatric drugs, hypnosis, radiation, brain electrode implants and torture—verified through declassified CIA documents. If you think these mind control experiments are a thing of the past, think again.

“My book, The C.I.A. Doctors, is based on 15,000 pages of documents I received from the CIA through the Freedom of Information Act and dozens of papers published in medical journals. These papers report the results of research funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Department of the Army, the Office of Naval Research and the CIA.”

To read the rest of this blog article, click here

Doping up our children

(Orlando Sentinel Editorial)