Citizens Commission on Human Rights of St. Louis

“A persistent decline in the rate of Americans, especially children, newly diagnosed with depression followed the first federal warning on risks connected with antidepressant drugs, a study suggests.

In an important decision issued May 22, William S. Bigley v. Alaska Psychiatric Institute, the Alaska Supreme Court significantly advanced psychiatric patients’ constitutional due process rights when the state seeks to force them to take psychiatric drugs against their will.

“One of the things they held,” said Jim Gottstein, President and CEO of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) and the attorney who handled the case, “is that if the State is holding someone in a psychiatric facility, they must provide a feasible alternative to the forced drugging if the alternative satisfies the State’s asserted justification. The State’s only other option is to let the person go.”

The Court also held that in order to allow the person a realistic opportunity to prepare a defense, when filing a forced drugging petition, the State must provide a written statement of the facts underlying the petition, including the reasons for the forced drugging, information about the patient’s symptoms and diagnosis; the medication to be used; the method of administration; the likely dosage; possible side effects, risks and expected benefits; and the risks and benefits of alternative treatments and nontreatment. “This is very important,” Mr. Gottstein said, “because up until now, they just checked a box that said the person was incompetent to decline and the facility wants to drug the person. Then the State comes in with a witness who testifies untruthfully and there is no way to have been prepared to rebut it.”

Equally important, the Court ruled the person’s lawyer must be given access to the person’s medical and psychiatric records in advance of the hearing and adequate preparation time. “The problem is judges have been misled for years that these drugs increase safety and are beneficial to patients,” according to Mr. Gottstein, “The truth is they decrease safety, are ineffective for most, are physically very harmful, and prevent many people from recovering. The evidence on this is clear, but the way these cases have been rushed through without allowing adequate time for a defense, these facts have not normally been revealed to the judges.”

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. PsychRights is further dedicated to exposing the truth about psychiatric interventions and the courts being misled into ordering people subjected to these brain and body damaging drugs against their will. Extensive information about these dangers, and about the tragic damage caused by electroshock, is available on the PsychRights web site: http://psychrights.org.

Source: http://psychrights.org/pr/090522BigleyvAPINewsRls.pdf

On April 8^th, the Food and Drug Administration announced its intention to finally require manufacturers of medical devices marketed prior to 1976 to submit evidence of the devices’ safety and efficacy. These devices had been “grandfathered” in and despite the FDA’s assessment that they posed serious risks to health, they were never required to undergo any clinical safety trials (as have devices sold in the past 33 years). One of these risky devices is the electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or shock treatment) device.

Major media such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal quickly picked up on this story. Bloggers in particular zeroed in on the ECT device, with the general theme of incredulity: How could it that such a drastic procedure—applying electricity to the human brain to generate a dozen or more grand mal seizures—had been allowed to be used on a generation of patients (that’s over 3 million people even by the most conservative estimates) without ever having been tested to see if it were safe?

Indeed, this is the case; and it’s not news to readers of Linda Andre’s new book, Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment, published just a month before the FDA’s belated admission that it had essentially abdicated its responsibility to protect patients from harmful treatments.

The book is a history of shock treatment, with the emphasis on the history of the treatment since the 1970s. The author argues that this was a critical time for the shock industry, in part because the FDA’s assumption of the regulation of medical devices in 1976 and its classification of the ECT device in the high-risk Class III category in 1979 meant that—according to the law—the devices were to be subject to a safety investigation. No one knew at the time, nor could anyone have dreamed, that that day would not come for thirty years. The industry, Andre says, knew their treatment could not survive such scrutiny, so they adopted a public relations solution to what was essentially a scientific problem: They would make repeated claims for safety over the years, while lobbying the FDA to prevent any safety investigation from taking place.

At the same time former patients permanently damaged by shock treatment, as well as concerned citizens and scientists, lobbied the agency to conduct such an investigation. They lost, but not for lack of trying: They offered up their own brains for CAT-scans. They proposed animal brain scan studies. They submitted three formal citizen petitions to the agency, which the FDA essentially ignored…but in the process built up a public docket on the ECT device which takes a week to read (the author did so). They enlisted politicians and public health advocates as allies. They kept steady pressure on the FDA in every way they could think of for decades—but in the end the agency bent to the stronger pressure of the wealthy and powerful American Psychiatric Association.

It’s a dramatic David and Goliath story unparalleled in the history of medicine; and just last week, David was finally proven right.

It’s too late for a generation of patients who experienced permanent extensive amnesia and permanent cognitive disability, with the attendant loss of sense of self and of life chances. The author lets these former patients speak for themselves:

“I often feel as though a very vital part of my life ‘died’ as a result of these treatments.” “I do not think I will ever again be as intelligent a person as I was before.”

“ECT changed my life forever—and not for the better.”

“My personal belief is that an investigation is in order to prove that ECT is indeed beneficial and not brain damaging. How can I feel differently when that so-called therapy has wrecked a major portion of my life?”

“Doctors of Deception” makes clear that, at least in the case of the ECT device, the FDA’s failure to protect patients was not simply a matter of neglect or oversight; the agency had ample knowledge of the risks of the device and actively ignored repeated calls and opportunities to either conduct its own safety investigation or require the device manufacturers to do so.

The author reminds us that the FDA actually did call on shock machine manufacturers once before, in 1995, to prove their devices safe, but when the manufacturers simply ignored the call, the FDA did nothing. If history is any indication, the FDA is very likely to simply reclassify the ECT device to a low-risk category without any safety information or investigation at all rather than incur the wrath of the American Psychiatric Association.

At the very end of this cautionary tale, Andre writes: “Now that we know this history, now that what mostly hadn’t been written is written down in one place, maybe—just maybe—we can keep from repeating it. One thing is for certain: there will continue to be opportunities for the history of electroshock to take another turn.” Whether this will happen at the Food and Drug Administration or not, we will soon find out.

Links:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123920937438601763.html

“Medical Devices Face New Scrutiny from FDA” Wall Street Journal, April 8

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2009/NEW01990.html

“FDA to Review Medical Devices Marketed Prior to 1976” April 8

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/04/15/with-fda-change-ect-may-go-the-way-of-the-dinosaur/

“With FDA Change, ECT Machines May Go the Way of the Dinosaur” April 15

St. Petersburg Times
Florida Department of Children and Families review finds shortfalls in monitoring of foster children on psychiatric drugs
By Kris Hundley, Times Staff Writer
In Print: May 29, 2008

Spurred by the shocking suicide of a 7-year-old on psychiatric drugs, the agency in charge of Florida’s foster children has discovered serious shortcomings in its monitoring of kids on such powerful prescriptions.

After reviewing its files, the Department of Children and Families determined it had under-counted the number of foster kids on such medications as Risperdal and Adderall, overlooking hundreds of cases.

It also has failed to meet its legal requirement that such prescriptions be given only after parental consent or court order.

On Thursday, DCF said a review of the files of more than 20,000 children currently in the state’s foster care showed 2,669, or 13.19 percent, are taking one or more psychotropic medications.

That compares to about 4 or 5 percent of children in the general population who are on such prescriptions.

Of those foster children taking drugs, DCF discovered 16 percent had no proof either a parent or judge had signed off on the prescription, as required by a 2005 Florida law.

“That is unacceptable,” said DCF’s secretary George Sheldon. “We’re going to bring every single case of a foster child on drugs into compliance with the law.”

Concerns about pediatric use of anti-psychotic and anti-depressants have been growing along with increased warnings of such side effects as suicide, diabetes and weight gain. Few of the drugs have been tested or approved by the FDA for children, though physicians can prescribe them for this age group.

Robin Rosenberg, a Tampa lawyer and deputy director of Florida’s Children First, said advocacy groups like hers have been fighting for oversight of psychotropic drugs for years. “We’re not as far along as we should have been if the state had followed up on serious concerns starting in the late 1990s,” she said. “It’s a shame we’re in this place today.”

Sheldon, who was named to the top job at DCF in October, left no doubt that he had been deeply affected by Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old who hanged himself on a shower hose in south Florida in mid-April. The boy was in his third foster home and on Vyvanse, a medication for ADHD, as well as Symbyax, a combination of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant.

Though his caseworker repeatedly said Gabriel’s mother had agreed to the medications, that was not true. The boy’s psychotropic medications also had not been entered in the state’s tracking system.

To correct ongoing problems, Sheldon set a deadline of June 5 for action on cases without consent. This could include scheduling new doctors’ appointments, gaining informed consent from parents or expediting a judge’s review of the prescription.

Sheldon said he also was going to focus on the cases of 73 children under age 6 found to be on psychotropic drugs.

“I want a sense of urgency, but I also want to get it right,” he said. “I want to move forward, but I think it’s important for the agency to apologize for misinformation it may have put out in the past.”

Flaws in DCF’s record-keeping became clear in the immediate aftermath of Gabriel’s death. An initial review of the state’s database showed only 1,950 kids on psychotropic prescriptions. After a thorough review of individual records, however, that number grew by more than 700.

Preliminary data released in mid-May also showed some questionable dates on judicial consent. Though it’s not inconceivable a judge might sign an order on a Saturday or Sunday, early returns showed weekend consent orders on 129 occasions.

The final database, including information on types of drugs and diagnoses, was not available Thursday. Sheldon said a summary of the drug data would be posted on the DCF Web site and updated weekly.

“I’ve got a lot more confidence in these numbers than I had two weeks ago,” he said. “But any database is only as good as the quality of the information being put into it.”

One ongoing area of concern, Sheldon said, is the validity of any consent given by parents whose kids are in the state’s custody.

“A parent whose child is taken into our care is going to sign virtually anything and that’s not informed consent,” he said. “My preference is that the biological parent have a dialog with the psychiatrist.”

Now that DCF has a handle on the number of foster children on psychotropic drugs, Sheldon said the department can begin to address the bigger issue of the efficacy of such drugs.

He has asked an independent panel investigating Gabriel Myers’ death to make recommendations on improving DCF’s oversight of these medications. Sheldon said a second-party review of all such prescriptions might be necessary; currently, only prescriptions for kids under age 6 require such review.

DCF has set up a page on its web site that tracks the progress of the panel investigation into the boy’s suicide. The page includes a photo of the smiling boy.

“We have his face on the screen watching us to see how well we learned from his life and death,” Sheldon said. “We cannot let him down.”

Source: http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/medicine/article1005344.ece

Miami Herald
More Florida foster kids than thought are given mental-health drugs
A state database of foster-care records badly underreported the number of foster children on powerful psychiatric drugs, child-welfare bosses revealed.
In Print: May 29, 2008
By CAROL MARBIN MILLER

Nearly three of 10 teenage Florida foster children have been prescribed a mental-health drug, and 73 foster kids younger than 6 are taking mind-altering drugs, according to a study released Thursday in response to the death of a Broward foster child who was taking such medications.

In all, 2,669 children — or 13 percent of Florida foster children — are being given powerful psychiatric drugs, said the study, commissioned last month by Department of Children & Families Secretary George Sheldon. The largest group, almost 60 percent, are teens ages 13 to 17.

The 2,669 children represent about one-third more kids than a DCF database had reported as taking mental-health drugs — meaning electronic state records had significantly underestimated the use of mind-altering drugs.

Child-welfare administrators are investigating the use of mental-health drugs by children in state care in the wake of the April 16 death of Gabriel Myers, a troubled 7-year-old boy who hanged himself in the shower of his Margate foster home.

The Miami Herald reported that Gabriel had been given psychiatric drugs in his final weeks, including anti-depressants that are linked to a higher risk of suicide among children. Contrary to a 4-year-old law adopted after Herald stories, neither Gabriel’s parents nor a judge had consented to the use of such drugs.

”Normally, a 7-year-old boy is learning how to read and tie his shoes,” Sheldon said. “It is incomprehensible to me even now that a child so young may have deliberately and consciously made a decision to end his life.”

Sheldon, a former deputy attorney general, said he had ”serious questions” about the use of mental-health drugs on children. Many such drugs have never been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use on children, and many are linked to serious side effects.

`CHEMICAL RESTRAINTS’

”I think this should be done as a last resort, after a full review by . . . medical professionals,” Sheldon said.

For almost a decade, Florida child advocates have complained that mental-health drugs are being used as ”chemical restraints” to control some foster kids.

On Thursday, Andrea Moore — a former head of Florida’s Children First who first suggested child-welfare workers were relying on mental-health drugs to control behavior — said the large number of older foster children and children in institutional settings makes such concerns far more pressing.

”The shift-care workers at group homes are much more likely to report sadness and crying as depression, or anxiousness as some sort of mental-health problem,” Moore said. “You’d be sad and anxious, too, if you didn’t know where you were going to live from day to day.”

Moore also expressed concerns that the data may not be trustworthy. Sheldon acknowledged Thursday that the numbers had not been compared with a database kept by the state’s Medicaid program. The agency also has acknowledged that caregivers were once told they did not need consents for mental-health drugs in certain cases — meaning the drugs may not be listed at all.

Among the 20,235 children whose case files were studied, investigators found no parental or judicial consent on record for 16 percent of the children, the report said.

Like previous studies, the new report shows that children in foster homes, group homes or other institutional settings are far more likely to be given mental-health drugs than children living with relatives. Overall, only 4 percent of children in relative care have been prescribed psychiatric drugs, compared with 21 percent for foster homes and 26 percent for other out-of-home settings.

COMPARISON

The disparity is particularly acute among older children: Among children 13 to 17, nearly 12 percent of those living with relatives have been prescribed at least one mental-health drug, compared with 35 percent in foster care and 33 percent in other institutional settings, the report says.

The private foster-care agencies in Miami-Dade and Broward fared about average in caring for the adolescents. Thirty percent of teens in the care of Our Kids in Miami-Dade had been given one or more mental-health drug, compared with 28 percent of Broward foster kids.

In contrast to the children in state care, about 4 to 5 percent of children in the general population are taking one or more mental-health drug, said Dr. Rajiv Tandon, a former DCF chief psychiatrist who belongs to a work group Sheldon appointed to study Gabriel’s death.

The report outlines steps DCF administrators will take, including:

• State child-welfare lawyers will seek consent from parents who still have authority to make decisions on their children’s behalf, or go to court to seek approval for mental-health drugs.

• Administrators are launching an ”immediate” review to determine how reliable the state’s child-welfare database is.

`IMPORTANT FIRST STEP’

• DCF administrators and the heads of private foster-care agencies throughout the state will discuss the use of psychiatric drugs by foster children weekly by telephone.

”The purpose of these calls is to ensure effective communication on improvements that must take place,” the report said.

”This report is an important first step in closely examining not only this case — but to help ensure this type of tragedy never happens again,” Sheldon said Thursday at a news conference.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/1070905.html

Read the quotes below from psychiatrists / psychologists who admit psychiatric disorders are not diseases (but not the APA President).

Then watch the video at http://youtube.com/cchrint.

“Psychiatry makes unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin…This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention naïve and perhaps delusional.”

— Dr. David Kaiser, psychiatrist

“In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease,’ formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.”

— Dr. Thomas Dorman, internist and member of the
Royal College of Physicians of the UK

“I believe, until the public and psychiatry itself see that DSM labels are not only useless as medical ‘diagnoses’ but also have the potential to do great harm—particularly when they are used as means to deny individual freedoms, or as weapons by psychiatrists acting as hired guns for the legal system.”

— Dr. Sydney Walker III, psychiatrist

“The way things get into the DSM is not based on blood test or brain scan or physical findings. It’s based on descriptions of behavior. And that’s what the whole psychiatry system is.”

— Dr. Colin Ross, Psychiatrist

“There’s no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, ‘I have a biochemical imbalance,’ I say, ‘Show me your lab tests.’ There are no lab tests. So what’s the biochemical imbalance?”

— Dr. Ron Leifer, psychiatrist

“Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV [and ICD-10] are terms arrived at through peer consensus.”

— Tana Dineen Ph.D., Canadian psychologist

“No biochemical, neurological, or genetic markers have been found for Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, compulsive alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, gambling or any other so-called mental illness, disease, or disorder.”

— Bruce Levine, Ph.D., psychologist and
author of Commonsense Rebellion

by Kelly Patricia O’Meara

It seems these days that everything is a test. Yes, the powers that be have decided that taxpayer benevolence now is contingent upon passing a stress test. But much to the dismay of those being tested, the results may reveal, for example, that the nation’s financial wizards and auto giants are actually bankrupt midgets and unworthy of America’s support.

Given that officialdom has embraced the stress test as a barometer of future viability and success and a determinant for public financing, it seems reasonable to request that other important issues that very personally impact the health and welfare of the American people be subjected to similar stress tests. There is none more deserving of stress testing than the proposed MOTHERS Act.

On the surface, the MOTHERS Act reflects its sponsors overwhelming compassion and empathy for women suffering from alleged mental health disorders resulting from childbirth – often referred to as Postpartum Depression. But when one conducts a brief stress test on important sections of the legislation, taxpayers may find that this costly and sweeping mental health legislation actually fails women of America, but goes a long way in inflating the balance sheets of one of the most lucrative industries in the nation – big Pharma.

For instance, the MOTHERS Act legislation that currently is pending in the U.S. Senate states that the Secretary of Health and Human Services may “make grants to eligible entities…” to deliver essential services to individuals with a postpartum condition. What the legislation doesn’t delineate is who and what entities may receive these grants. Are these “entities” funded by pharmaceutical companies?  Lawmakers have not specified what constitutes an “entity” so it will be impossible to know if there are conflicts of interest between those who develop the screening tools and conduct research and the pharmaceutical companies who most certainly will benefit financially from the increased diagnosing.

Furthermore, no research guidelines have been provided for public disclosure. This is no small issue, given that the Senate Finance Committee recently exposed the conflicts of interest of the top ten psychiatric researchers in the U.S. who had received millions of dollars in pharmaceutical funding. Where is the guarantee that the “entities” are not pharmaceutical front-men?

The legislation also allows for the “expansion and intensification of activities” into the research of Postpartum conditions and “evaluation of new treatments.” This is a humdinger. Despite ever-increasing published data and clinical studies challenging the safety of antidepressants and other antipsychotic drugs, there is no guidance provided by lawmakers to mandate that the public be made aware of the avalanche of scientific data that not only questions the efficacy of the drugs available to mothers suffering from these conditions, but also warning of the dangers associated with currently available “treatments.”

The section of the legislation dealing with expanding the research into the causes of Postpartum conditions is wholly void of any guidelines that insure the validity of the research conducted, and provides nothing in the way of public disclosure or peer-review of research before it is launched in education campaigns. In the real world, research is conducted and submitted for peer review. In this instance, it appears that Congress has learned nothing from the ongoing banking debacle and naively believes that the researchers will be on their best behavior – self-policing themselves. This is a dangerous omission in the legislation, especially since the Senate Finance Committee has exposed the serious conflicts of interest that exist between researchers and pharmaceutical companies.

Making matters worse, much of the legislation revolves around funding national education campaigns about Postpartum Depression, including Public Service Announcements and television and radio advertisements. Based on the current language of the legislation, research will be conducted without peer review – no checks and balances; no one to validate the integrity of the research which then will be used to determine a woman’s mental health status. Given that this research will be used to develop questions or tests for screening new mothers for possible mental disorders, one might find it important to know that the research has integrity and has been validated by the scientific community, free of pharmaceutical largesse. Congress apparently didn’t think integrity of the research is important and there are no provisions to protect women from pharmaceutical driven research.

Taxpayers may also expect that such important legislation would make provisions for some kind of oversight; some government entity that could provide feedback on the success or failure of this mental health campaign. One avenue that may help lawmakers’ determine if these new programs are working is the Food and Drug Administration’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reports. MedWatch collects information about people who have experienced adverse reactions to drugs overseen by the FDA. With the increased drugging that most certainly will occur with the increase in diagnosing, it seems logical that lawmakers would insert provisions in the legislation to annually review Adverse Event Reports collected by MedWatch, especially those relating to drugs prescribed in the treatment of Postpartum Depression. Unfortunately, because the nation’s lawmakers have provided no provisions for oversight, countless numbers of women may be harmed by the “treatments” but will be none the wiser because no protections were provided in the legislation.

There also is the very basic question of why the government is endorsing this sweeping mental health legislation and sanctioning a national advertising campaign about Postpartum Depression when there is no definitive data about the cause of the condition or that it is an objective confirmable abnormality – the scientific standard for disease. Given that there are so many unknowns in this legislation, it seems irresponsible to go forward without reasonable protections in place.

Congress must insure that all research and screening tests proposed and endorsed by this legislation be disclosed for peer-review and consumer input before implementing any screening tests and approving any research to be used in the national education campaign, including Public Service Announcements and radio and television advertising.

Given the documented risks related to the current modes of treatments, including antidepressant and antipsychotics, which are commonly prescribed for Postpartum Depression and documented to cause birth defects and host of other issues in pregnant and nursing mothers, Congress must include mandatory reviews of published research and clinical data on the drugs prescribed for the treatment of Postpartum Depression.

Finally, Congress must protect the integrity of the research by providing strict guidelines to insure that there are no conflicts of interest between the researcher and the pharmaceutical industry.

Without these safeguards, the MOTHERS Act cannot today, or ever, pass a stress test of viability and mothers and their children certainly will be on the losing end of this mental health campaign. Sometimes it’s in the best interest of the people for Congress NOT to act, and until our lawmakers are confident that all legislative precautions have been taken to insure optimum results, this is one of those times.

About the author:

Kelly Patricia O’Meara is an award-winning investigative journalist who authored more than two dozen articles examining the psychiatric pharmaceutical industry during her tenure at the Washington Times’ Insight Magazine. Her articles resulted in record sales of the issues in which they appeared and among the national and international press that have featured her articles are Fox News, the O’Reilly Factor, CBS News, BBC, ABC’s 20/20 and Hannity and Colmes. She is also the author of Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Sickness and Pushes Pills that Kill. Prior to working as an investigative journalist, O’Meara spent sixteen years on Capitol Hill and was the lead investigator in several Congressional investigations. She holds a B.S. in Political Science from the University of Maryland.

Please contact the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee to express your opposition to H.R. 20. Go to http://uniteforlife.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/stop-the-mothers-act-action-day-all-over-earth-day-for-healthy-births-day/ for more information, and contact your Senator to let them know what you think.

(NaturalNews) Rep. Ron Paul has introduced the Parental Consent Act [H.R. 2218] to protect families from mandatory “mental health screening” — a thinly-veiled attempt by Big Pharma to drug expectant mothers and new moms with dangerous psychiatric drugs.

Here’s the full text of the speech given by Ron Paul in the House of Representatives, April 30, 2009:

Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the Parental Consent Act. This bill forbids Federal funds from being used for any universal or mandatory mental-health screening of students without the express, written, voluntary, informed consent of their parents or legal guardians. This bill protects the fundamental right of parents to direct and control the upbringing and education of their children.

The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has recommended that the federal and state governments work toward the implementation of a comprehensive system of mental-health screening for all Americans. The commission recommends that universal or mandatory mental-health screening first be implemented in public schools as a prelude to expanding it to the general public. However, neither the commission’s report nor any related mental-health screening proposal requires parental consent before a child is subjected to mental-health screening. Federally-funded universal or mandatory mental-health screening in schools without parental consent could lead to labeling more children as “ADD” or “hyperactive” and thus force more children to take psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, against their parents’ wishes.

Already, too many children are suffering from being prescribed psychotropic drugs for nothing more than children’s typical rambunctious behavior. According to Medco Health Solutions, more than 2.2 million children are receiving more than one psychotropic drug at one time. In fact, according to Medico Trends, in 2003, total spending on psychiatric drugs for children exceeded spending on antibiotics or asthma medication.

Many children have suffered harmful side effects from using psychotropic drugs. Some of the possible side effects include mania, violence, dependence, and weight gain. Yet, parents are already being threatened with child abuse charges if they resist efforts to drug their children. Imagine how much easier it will be to drug children against their parents’ wishes if a federally-funded mental-health screener makes the recommendation.

Universal or mandatory mental-health screening could also provide a justification for stigmatizing children from families that support traditional values. Even the authors of mental-health diagnosis manuals admit that mental-health diagnoses are subjective and based on social constructions. Therefore, it is all too easy for a psychiatrist to label a person’s disagreement with the psychiatrist’s political beliefs a mental disorder. For example, a federally-funded school violence prevention program lists “intolerance” as a mental problem that may lead to school violence. Because “intolerance” is often a code word for believing in traditional values, children who share their parents’ values could be labeled as having mental problems and a risk of causing violence. If the mandatory mental-health screening program applies to adults, everyone who believes in traditional values could have his or her beliefs stigmatized as a sign of a mental disorder. Taxpayer dollars should not support programs that may label those who adhere to traditional values as having a “mental disorder.”

Madam Speaker, universal or mandatory mental-health screening threatens to undermine parents’ right to raise their children as the parents see fit. Forced mental-health screening could also endanger the health of children by leading to more children being improperly placed on psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, or stigmatized as “mentally ill” or a risk of causing violence because they adhere to traditional values. Congress has a responsibility to the nation’s parents and children to stop this from happening. I, therefore, urge my colleagues to cosponsor the Parental Consent Act.
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Take Action!

Ask your Representative to co-sponsor H.R. 2218.