Posts Tagged ‘Screening’

As Nation Reels From Mass Violence, CCHR Calls For Mandatory Toxicology Tests

Monday, June 6th, 2022

Mental health watchdog joins others in wanting answers to what drives individuals to commit horrific, senseless acts of violence; toxicology tests should be part of every investigation into such acts.

By CCHR International 

[References are provided in the CCHR INT publication.]

The Mental Health Industry Watchdog

May 30, 2022

As the country reels in the wake of another tragic shooting, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International joins in sending condolences to the families of lost children and teachers. And, like many others, it questions what could have triggered the mindset of the alleged killer, an issue that needs responding to if we are to truly face preventing more tragedies like this and provide grieving families and the nation with answers.

Media quote experts saying that such individuals are “mentally disturbed,” or have “untreated mental illness,” but that doesn’t explain the level of violence we are seeing or what drives a person to pull a trigger. At the very minimum, CCHR says, mandatory toxicology tests should be required in each deadly incident to determine any prescription or illicit drug use, especially as today, most psychotropic drugs can be purchased from rogue online pharmacies, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Students abuse prescription drugs, with some 2.8 million teen students engaging in illicit drug use. Estimates are that up to 20% of college students abuse prescription stimulants alone.

A review of scientific literature published in Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry regarding the “astonishing rate” of mental illness over the past 50 years revealed that it’s not “mental illness” linked to increased acts of violence, but, rather, the psychiatric drugs prescribed to treat it.

“There is no evidence the shooter is mentally ill, just angry and hateful,” said Lori Post, director of the Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics at the Northwestern University School of Medicine. “While it is understandable that most people cannot fathom slaughtering small children and want to attribute it to mental health, it is very rare for a mass shooter to have a diagnosed mental health condition.”

One thing is for sure, the country’s mental health system has been an abject failure and investing more in it is not prevention but part of the problem. Listing 20 high profile mass killings since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, or 19 since 2007, including two mass shootings in May this year, in 85% of the cases (17 of 20) or 89% since 2007, there was a potential history of mental health services or current taking of, or withdrawal from, prescription psychotropic drugs involved. In only several of the cases was a toxicology report mentioned.

The FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System reports that at least 31 out of 484 medications are disproportionately associated with violence, which includes 25 psychotropic drugs. This includes eleven antidepressants, six sedative/hypnotics and three drugs for treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The specific cases of violence included: homicide, physical assaults, physical abuse, homicidal ideation, and cases described as violence-related symptoms.

Experts have consistently raised concerns about this:

“The irritability and impulsivity” from antidepressants, for example, “can make people suicidal or homicidal.” – Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen

“The link between antidepressants and violence, including suicide and homicide, is well established.” – Patrick D. Hahn, affiliate professor of biology at Loyola University Maryland

“Violence and other potentially criminal behavior caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret.” – Professor David Healy, leading psychopharmacology expert and professor of psychiatry in Wales 

In a study published in the British Medical Journal, in January 2016, Prof. Peter C. Gøtzsche and other researchers reported: “Perpetrators of school shootings and similar events have often been reported to be users of antidepressants….” Antidepressants, including the use of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) and Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors (SNRIs), put at risk the lives of individuals prescribed them. Reviewing numerous studies of five different antidepressants, they found there was a doubling of the risk for both aggressive behavior and suicidality for children and adolescents.

The use of psychotropic drugs in schools is so rife in the U.S. that in 2004, a Prohibition of Mandatory Medication Amendment was necessary when it was discovered that, astoundingly, parents were being threatened with criminal child abuse charges if they refused to put their school-aged child on a psychotropic drug as a requisite for their education, or took them off it.

It is the sudden change in behavior that prompts questions in potential drug-taking. Salvador Romas, responsible for the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas raises questions on why Ramos, experienced sudden behavior changes. Authorities have said Ramos had no known criminal or mental health history. But no toxicology test has been done to determine if he’d acquired or had taken any psychotropic substance—licit or illicit.

Ramos had been a student at Uvalde High School but he dropped out of school and was not on track to graduate this year.  It is unclear what social services he may have undergone given the number of police visits to his home.  He apparently had a history of being “the nicest kid, the shyest kid,” according to a friend, but was bullied for stuttering. “He would get bullied hard, like bullied by a lot of people,” a school friend, Mr. Stephen Garcia said. “Over social media, over gaming, over everything.”

His behavior had apparently recently begun to deteriorate, with him admitting to cutting his face with a knife over and over for fun. About a year ago, Ramos posted on social media photos of automatic rifles he would have on his wish list. The teen had hinted on social media that an attack could be coming, one state senator told reporters. “He suggested the kids should watch out,” a lawmaker said.

In the wake of the Sante Fe High School shooting in 2018 that left eight students and two teachers dead, the Texas Senate approved a school safety bill to prevent another such tragedy from happening. It established threat assessment teams to help implement safe ways to identify dangerous students. Every Texas district is required to have a behavioral threat assessment team tasked with preventing horrific acts like the Uvalde shooting at local schools. Of the 1,022 total districts – 80% (818) reported their board of trustees established a team. Of the 818 districts that reported establishing a behavioral threat assessment team, over 90% reported members appointed to their behavioral threat assessment team and were expert in behavior management (793), special education (n = 790), counseling (n = 783), and mental health/substance use (n = 746).

Unfortunately, like mental health services, behavioral threat assessment is not based on science, but mostly conjecture and such an inexact “science” means prediction can be futile. In the sample of 20 cases cited here, it was unclear how many may have been involved in social media well in advance of the act of mass violence. One “Big Brother” program in the U.S. scans billions of social media posts for indications of harm and violence, and relays messages in near-real time to safety and security professionals. It uses a software program that can examine language written on posts. It reaps the company up to $5 million a year in revenue.

Even an article on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Psychiatry Online pointed out that “Computer-generated recommendations may carry a false authority that would override expert human judgment” and “raises false hopes that machines will explain the mysteries of mental health and mental illness.” However, the real point is that psychiatry and psychology’s ability to diagnose any mental disorder is not based on science but on arbitrary whims that AI can only exacerbate this.

The use of AI and acceptance of AI and Applications (Apps) in mental health could contribute to the problem. AI is now marketed as a means to “prevent” or quickly identify the “growing” numbers of people, including children and youths, said to be mentally ill. Add to this, surging digitalization and growing smartphone & internet use increase the use of mental health apps. Peter Foltz, a research professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science stated: “Language is a critical pathway to detecting patient mental states,” says Foltz. “Using mobile devices and AI, we are able to track patients daily and monitor these subtle changes.”

AI identifies and diagnoses from speech patterns of young children and says it can monitor everything from their googling, texting, Facebook use and Twitter. One system asserts it can detect cyber-bullying, self-harm and grief sentiments in students’ emails and in Google/OneDrive. There is no standardized process for evaluating the validity of such research.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” said Ann Cavoukian, the distinguished expert-in-residence leading the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at Ryerson University in Toronto. “I say that as a psychologist. The feeling of constantly being watched or monitored is the last thing you want.”

No amount of money expended on mental health services could have prevented what occurred in Texas. In 2021, Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) received more than $210 million in federal emergency grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for mental health and substance use disorder services. For the 2022 fiscal year, Texas Community Mental Health Grant programs saw increased funding of $2,910,409. For the same budget period, federal funding increased by $41,103,876. The 2022-23 budget has a projected $8.1 billion for mental health services.

Mental health screening and surveys in schools have notoriously been criticized for lack of science and validity. The late Karen Effrem, M.D., a renowned pediatrician and researcher, found that increased screening results in “the increased psychiatric drugging of children and adolescents,” with significant evidence of “harmful, if not fatal side effects, including suicide, violence, psychosis, hallucinations, diabetes, and movement disorders.”

Drug proponents argue that there are many shootings and acts of violence that have not been correlated to psychiatric drugs, but that is exactly the point. It has neither been confirmed nor refuted, as law enforcement is not required to investigate or report on prescribed drugs linked to violence, and media rarely pose the question. This is one reason why compulsory toxicology testing should occur and record of any drugs found added to all databases on acts of mass violence.

Read CCHR’s comprehensive report, Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence and Suicide.

Teens are Overdosing on Prescribed Psychiatric Drugs at an Alarming Rate

Monday, March 21st, 2022

A growing number of teens and young adults are overdosing on mental health drugs, according to a study published March 2, 2022 in the journal Pediatrics.

Many of the overdoses are due to abuse of prescribed psychiatric drugs such as benzodiazepines and psychostimulants.

Benzos, or BZDs, include anti-anxiety drugs such as Xanax; psychostimulants include drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall, and Concerta.

Between 2016 and 2018, results show 29 percent of the youths who overdosed on BZDs received a written prescription within one month of their overdose. One in four youths overdosing on mental health stimulants received a doctor’s prescription a month before the incident. The study found that young adults who intentionally overdosed on BZDs and stimulants were more likely to have a recent prescription than those who suffered an accidental overdose.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4,777 U.S. youths died of a drug overdose in 2019. BZD use accounted to 727 of these overdoses and 902 involved psychostimulants.

We hear renewed cries from the psychiatric industry for more funds and more screenings. Unfortunately, psychiatric screenings for potential suicide or self-harm are a total fraud.

Risk assessments, screenings, school mental health programs and more funding are often presented as solutions to suicide, and since the onset of the Covid pandemic calls for more screenings and funding are louder than ever. Yet these so-called solutions are actually contributing to the problem by masking truly effective solutions and proliferating the use of psychotropic drugs whose side effects include suicide and violence.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatry is not workable.

The Suicide Risk Assessment Fraud

Monday, February 28th, 2022

“A disappointing, and perhaps the most telling, finding was that there has been no improvement in the accuracy of suicide risk assessment over the last 40 years.”

Suicide Risk Assessment doesn’t work. In fact, research suggests it not only doesn’t help, but also it may hurt.

One study looked at the last 40 years of suicide risk assessment research. They found no statistical method to identify patients at a high-risk of suicide in a way that would improve treatment.

Another study of people who had already harmed themselves found that there was no evidence to support the use of risk assessment scales.

Combined with ineffective suicide risk assessment, patients labeled with depression or suicidal ideation often receive prescriptions for dangerous psychotropic drugs laden, and even labeled, with side effects that encourage the exact symptoms they are marketed to treat.

Suicide prevention is a social issue, rather than a medical one. A psychiatrist prescribing an antidepressant is thus not really providing a valid treatment, and the widespread use of suicide risk assessment diverts social and health care practitioners from engaging with patients to find out and handle whatever is really the problem.

Risk assessments, screenings, school mental health programs and more funding are often presented as solutions to suicide, and since the onset of the Covid pandemic calls for more screenings and funding are louder than ever. Yet these so-called solutions are actually contributing to the problem by masking truly effective solutions and proliferating the use of psychotropic drugs whose side effects include suicide and violence.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatry is not workable.

Prevalent Proliferation of Pandemic Panic

Monday, August 24th, 2020

Following the lockdown of many schools due to Covid-19, we are seeing reports that teachers are being instructed to emphasize emotional and stress-related curricula instead of academics. We are also seeing increasing reports of emotional and stress related issues with the teachers themselves.

Prestigious universities and foundations are devoting considerable resources to “research” the emotional and stress-related issues of both teachers and students due to panic over Covid-19 and lockdowns. Such research continually demands more funds from both governments and private sources, making funds less available for urgently needed research with a better return on investment.

We predict a renewed effort by the psychopharmaceutical industry to put more “mental health screening” into schools countrywide. This is a very bad idea.

A “screen” is a test for some condition, in this case a test for mental illness. A person who is screened and found to exhibit so-called symptoms of mental illness can then be diagnosed with a mental “disease” or “disorder” and referred to a psychiatrist or psychiatric facility (or even to a General Practitioner) to be prescribed psychiatric drugs. Typical screens are usually nothing more than a few questions about one’s level of stress or anxiety, since there are no clinical tests for mental disorders.

Mental health screening aims to get whole populations on drugs and thus under control. The kinds of drugs used create further medical and social problems due to their adverse side effects, and these subsequent complications require additional taxes and laws such as the expansion of Medicaid to handle them. The net result is a sick and fearful population dependent on the government to “solve” all their problems. The pandemic is the perfect foil.

We remind people that resilience and unity have kept us all on track before without resorting to mind-altering drugs to get through. Epidemics do take a significant toll, also creating uncertainties and worries about the future. But we also want to ensure that one of the legacies of the Coronavirus is not minds damaged by psychotropic drugs and other harmful psychiatric interventions that can carry with them long-term risks and harm.

CCHR encourages anyone who is being advised that they or a loved one should take psychiatric drugs to demand a “differential diagnosis” where the doctor obtains a thorough history and conducts a complete physical exam, ruling out all the possible problems that might cause a set of symptoms and explains any possible side effects of the recommended treatments with Full Informed Consent.

The psychiatric Rush to Market

Monday, February 17th, 2020
Psychiatry has always given the impression that cures were the rule, rather than the exception. However, the psychiatric industry itself admits it has no capacity to cure.

Psychotropic drugging is big business — a high-income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion industry in psychotropic 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.

Thus there is a continuing need to find or create new patients to which to market new drugs, and a continuing rush to market for the latest drugs regardless of their harmful side effects.

The Risk of Side Effects

In a study of 68,730 individuals it was found that psychotropic drugs (SSRIs, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and benzodiazepines) are independently associated with a significantly increased risk of hip fractures and other major osteoporotic fractures.

Lead author Dr. James Bolton at the University of Manitoba says, “So physicians need to think about fracture risk as they are prescribing these medications, especially in patients who are vulnerable to fracture.”

Psychiatric Marketing Campaigns

Almost a third of drugs cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration pose safety risks that are identified only after their approval. Thus we say “rush to market”; you can find hidden drug marketing campaigns practically everywhere.

Many of these marketing campaigns come from industry?funded front groups operated by psychiatrists but posing as compassionate patient support groups. Of all these programs, one of the most successful is the benevolent?sounding mental health screening campaign; it uses broad?based psychiatric screening questionnaires to diagnose common life situations such as sadness, nervousness and occasional loneliness.

Currently running is the “suicide prevention” campaign. But statistics show that there is no teenage suicide epidemic; and participants in these programs are more likely to consider suicide a solution to a problem after the screening program than before the program.

With a long and well-documented history of failure, psychiatrists and their drugs are under attack by government safety warnings, legislation, and tens of thousands of lawsuits.

Interestingly, underlying most psychiatric problems is an undiscovered and untreated physical illness. And when that is cured, so is the “mental problem.” But because of the powerful hold psychiatrists and drug companies exert over the rest of the medical field, this is rarely told to patients. To protect yourself and those you love, insist on a full and accurate consent: an accounting of all risks and benefits of the treatment recommended, of other treatments and of not doing anything at all.
Modern World

Are You A CryptoCurrency Addict?

Monday, July 30th, 2018

You think we’re joking, right?

But a hospital in Great Britain has a website devoted to cryptocurrency as a gambling addiction.

Castle Craig Hospital in Peeblesshire, Scotland (near Edinburgh) has a handy ten-question screening test to help you determine if you have such a gambling addiction, and they would be happy to treat you for it. If you answer “yes” to just one of these questions, you are likely addicted and desperately need help.

The “screening test” sounds a lot like the fraudulent “depression screening” tests promulgated by unscrupulous psychiatrists eager to prescribe you psychotropic drugs.

The recommended treatment is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), supplemented with an antidepressant to help you with low moods, and the publicly funded National Health Service in the United Kingdom would be happy to help you get treatment.

CBT, as we’ve remarked previously, is a form of psychotherapy that attempts to modify dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and thoughts — by evaluating for the person, challenging the person’s behaviors, and getting the person to change those behaviors, often in combination with psychiatric drugs.

This approach assumes addiction is a disease. This is patently false; such addiction is a moral failing. It cannot be cured with drugs.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) lists “Gambling disorder” as a mental disorder, but then it also lists “Religious or spiritual problem” as a mental disorder, so you can see that it is not really helpful, since the traditional and most effective treatment for gambling is religious or spiritual.

The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases version 11, released 18 June 2018, has a number of entries for various addictions, which it also considers as diseases — new in this edition is Gaming Disorder. Other so-called addictive behaviors in ICD-11 are Gambling Disorder, and of course the two catch-all disorders for the rest of us, “Other specified disorders due to addictive behaviours” and “Disorders due to addictive behaviours, unspecified.”

If someone is exhibiting behavioral problems, there are many things that can be done besides the exclusive drug- and behavior modification-based options that are the backbone of mental health services today.

The entirety of these psychological and psychiatric programs are founded on the tacit assumptions that mental health “experts” know all about the mind and mental phenomena, know a better way of life, a better value system and how to improve lives beyond the understanding and capability of everyone else in society.

The reality is that these mental health programs are designed to control people towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of the person’s sanity and well-being. Do we really want to institutionalize mandatory psychiatric counseling and screening, which is where all this is heading?

By the way, if you’re clueless about cryptocurrency, you can find out more about it by clicking here, but please refrain from gambling on it.

Immigrant Children Forcibly Injected with Psychiatric Drugs

Saturday, July 14th, 2018

A lawsuit filed April 18, 2018 claims that children detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) are unlawfully, routinely and forcibly given multiple psychotropic drugs without theirs or their parents’ consent in order to control their behavior rather than for any medically necessary reason (particularly those housed at the Shiloh Residential Treatment Center in Manvel, Texas), told little or nothing about these drugs, and often suffer negative side effects without recourse.

The lawsuit alleges that children were told they would not be released or see their parents unless they took drugs and that they only were receiving vitamins.

Taxpayers have paid more than $1.5 billion in the past four years to private companies operating immigrant youth shelters accused of serious lapses in care, including forced psychiatric drugging, neglect and sexual and physical abuse. In nearly all cases reviewed, the federal government continued contracts with these companies after serious allegations were raised.

This smacks of the forced over-drugging of foster children; we think both cases — the over-drugging of foster children and the over-drugging of immigrant children — are examples of coercive psychiatry at its worst. Harming children in the name of health is despicable, and the psychiatrists responsible should be in jail.

Claiming that even normal childhood behavior is a mental disorder and that drugs are the solution, psychiatrists and psychologists have insinuated themselves into positions of authority over children.

The entirety of psychological and psychiatric programs for children are founded on the tacit assumptions that mental health “experts” know all about the mind and mental phenomena, know a better way of life, a better value system and how to improve the lives of children beyond the understanding and capability of not only parents, but everyone else in society.

The reality is that all child mental health programs are designed to control the lives of children towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of not only the children’s sanity and well-being, but also that of their parents and of society itself.

Psychiatrists have been largely responsible for creating the problems they have ostensibly tried to solve. They are the last people to whom we should turn to solve the problems of our children.

If your child has been subjected to psychological/psychiatric screening without your consent, or coercively drugged and harmed, consult a lawyer to determine your right to prosecute criminally and civilly.

Support legislative measures that will protect children from psychiatric and psychological interference and which will remove their destructive influence from schools and other social institutions. Ultimately, psychiatry and psychology must be eliminated from society and their coercive and unworkable methods should never be funded by the State.

For more information click here to download and read the CCHR report “Harming Youth — Psychiatry Destroys Young Minds“.

UPDATED JULY 30, 2018

“A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the Trump administration to seek consent before administering psychotropic drugs to immigrant children held in a facility in Texas.”

They’re Coming to Screen You

Monday, May 14th, 2018

The National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention has released guidelines for suicide prevention (“Recommended Standard Care for People with Suicide Risk“).

The NAASP, a project of Education Development Center, is partially funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS).

Their main point of view is that suicide prevention should be managed by health care providers in the same way as prevention of common medical conditions.

The rate of suicide deaths in the U.S. rose significantly between 2000 and 2015 — from 10.44 per 100,000 to 13.26 per 100,000 — coincident with the increase of prescriptions for psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs.

“At least two thirds of suicide deaths occur within about 30 days of a medical contact, be that an emergency department (ED), a primary care practice, or a mental health professional” and up to 70% among the older male psychiatric population. This is not a good recommendation for seeing a psychiatrist.

They believe that suicide screening should be a standard action for all patients in the mental health care system. Mental health screening aims to get the whole population on drugs and thus under control. Contrary to how screening is presented by psychiatrists, there is no scientific evidence to substantiate these claims of screening for suicide risk.

The psychopharmaceutical industry has invented hundreds of mental health screening questionnaires devised from the fraudulent symptoms of “disorders” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), with drug companies paying for and copyrighting these. These questionnaires are all over the Internet, where any “lay person” can complete it, diagnose themselves and go ask their doctor for the drug recommended for it.

Unfortunately, they neglect to mention that the subjective questions used in these screenings are based on the DSM, which medical experts say is an unscientific and unreliable document. In 2004 the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention, “found no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality.” It’s just a way to put more people on prescription drugs. Some suicide risk assessments are designed to fit hand-in-glove with the effects of these drugs, emphasizing the physical symptoms that most respond to psychiatric drugs.

One such screening test called TeenScreen went out of business after admitting that it had a large chance that 84% of children screened could be wrongly identified as suicidal. Screening and early intervention sounds like a great idea until you turn out to be the one being screened.

Since there is no laboratory test that can identify mental illness or suicide risk, the diagnosis of a mental disorder or of a suicide risk is entirely subjective. Basically, it is the opinion of a psychiatrist who has decided he does not like what a person is thinking or feeling.

There certainly should be more attention paid by health care providers to the risk of suicide; however, that attention should be directed toward finding and fixing actual medical conditions and getting patients off of harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs.

Click here for more information about the history of mental health screening and its fraudulent nature.

Doctors in Schools

Monday, July 10th, 2017

Through psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, false explanations, easy-seizure commitment laws and often brutal, depersonalizing “treatments” and deadening, mind-altering drugs, thousands needlessly fall into psychiatry’s coercive system every day all over the world. It is a system which exemplifies human rights abuse.

“In the Australian state of Victoria, a state program kicked in at the beginning of 2017 to mandate that children as young as 12 should see a doctor in school at least once a week, to receive drugs and medical treatment without parental consent.”

“Select Victorian Government secondary schools will work together with local general practices to enable primary health care services to be delivered on school premises.

One suspects that this “Doctors in Schools” program is actually intended to consolidate government control over children and line the pockets of pharmaceutical corporations. You know that these doctors will be prescribing psychiatric drugs to these schoolchildren.

In his 1932 novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley depicts a “utopian” but totalitarian society, one that is insane and bent on control. It is a controlled civilization, using, as Huxley stated, the “technique of suggestion – through infant conditioning and, later, with the aid of drugs.”

In 2003 the release of the U.S. New Freedom Commission on Mental Health Report recommended that all 52 million American schoolchildren be “screened” for “mental illness,” claiming – without proof – that “early detection, assessment, and links with “treatment” could “prevent mental health problems from worsening.” “Treatment” ultimately means drugs – usually the most expensive ones that effectively create lifetime mental health patients – for which the government and insurance agencies can be billed.

Children worldwide are under extremely dangerous assault. Today, parents and teachers are also deceived in the name of improved mental health and better education.

In the U.S. alone, 1.5 million children and adolescents on antidepressants are at risk of known, drug-induced violent or suicidal side effects.

In Missouri, Medicaid spends $16 Million per year on psychiatric drugs for roughly 20,000 children in state foster care. Foster care babies less than a year old are being given barbiturates to make them sleep. The side effects of barbiturates include addiction, depression, disorientation, hallucinations, kidney disease, and liver disease.

This information is not easy, comfortable reading. Ultimately the harshest reality you will have to face is that children urgently need our help and protection. Without that, the future for one and all is at serious risk.

For more information on harmful mental health screening, assessments, evaluations and programs within our schools, go to http://www.cchrstl.org/screening.shtml.

The Screeners are Screaming Again

Saturday, March 12th, 2016

The Screeners are Screaming Again

Just when you thought that calls for ubiquitous mental health screening was winding down, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is calling for widespread depression screening for children.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is made up of 16 volunteer members who are supposed to be experts in prevention, evidence-based medicine, and primary care. Task Force members are appointed by the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to serve 4-year terms. AHRQ is a federal government entity which is supposed to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide research on health care.

In February, 2016, the USPSTF recommended repeated and widespread primary care mental health screening for “major depressive disorder” in children aged 12 to 18 years. The usual “treatment” is SSRI psychiatric drugs.

While they admit that “Medications for the treatment of depression, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), have known harms,” they basically ignore the harms in order to push the screenings and the drugs.

Mental health screening is a test for so-called mental illness. A person who is screened and found to exhibit symptoms of mental distress can then be diagnosed with a mental “disease” or “disorder” and referred to a psychiatrist or psychiatric facility (or even to a General Practitioner) to be prescribed psychiatric drugs.

Mental health screening aims to get whole populations on drugs and thus under control. The kinds of drugs used create further medical and social problems, and these subsequent complications require additional taxes and laws to handle them. The net result is a sick and fearful population dependent on the government to “solve” all their problems.

Recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

Psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatric institutions, and other medical doctors prescribing psychiatric drugs and treatments must be made fully accountable for their funding, practices and treatments, and their results, or lack thereof — including prescribing antidepressants whose only results are harmful side effects.