A ridiculous mental health initiative was unveiled by President Bush in July 2004, after being established in 2002. The plan promises to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing “services in the community, rather than institutions- according to a March 2004 progress report entitled, ‘New Freedom Commission on Mental health’, Executive Order 13263.. It is a federal action agenda that is being initiated.

Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system, so he told the public. This includes over 50 million children targeted for mental health screening in over 100,000 schools in the United States.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA), who has an overt affinity for pharmaceutical industry funds, supports this Commission. In fact, the Bush administration was very appreciative of the efforts of the APA to suppress mass media coverage of facts and stories raised by others exposing plans to screen others for mental illness.

The 15 person commission issued its recommendations in July 2003. Included in this commission is the aggressive mental health screening of children performed by TeenScreen, which is in partnership with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)…

TeenScreen clearly is simply a government sponsored market expander for those in the pharmaceutical industry who market psychotropic drugs. SSRIs, a frequently prescribed class of medications, generates close to 200 million prescriptions in the United States that approaches a cost of 20 billion dollars a year.

On TeenScreen’s own website, it states that it believes any funding from pharmaceutical companies could create the appearance of a possible inducement to recommend treatment, yet TeenScreen does not prohibit funds from drug companies.

Medicaid is the largest payer of mental health services- with 1 out of every 5 dollars spent by Medicaid goes to psychotropic drugs. Nearly 3 million children are receiving more than one psychotropic drug at one time without merit or efficacy provided by these drugs, overall. The cost is on average over 100 dollars a month for each child for these drugs…

After getting passive consent from the parents of the children TeenScreen desires to screen, TeenScreen asks a series of questions to children that they believe will indicate mental disorders- with the focus being those children who are potentially suicidal, completely disregarding the fact that a score on a rating scale alone is not sufficient to diagnose such mental illnesses as depression.

The number of positive responses from the questions answered by the children will determine by TeenScreen if mental illness exists. However, a score is positive if a child refuses to answer any of the questions given to them by TeenScreen. The positive indications are catalysts for referrals of children for treatment. Yet TeenScreen does not disclose where these children are sent for treatment to anyone.

These questions are not given to the parents of the child screened. This violates the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment. However, the questions can be obtained on websites such as: http://www.teenscreentruths.com...

TeenScreen links students with those who can pharmacologically treat them for unlikely mental disorders- to further grow the number of kids already on psychotropic drugs- which exceeds 10 million children. If students are assessed by the TeenScreen staff, and are found to require additional services, are connected with a case manager to arrange for appropriate intervention.

Really?

Intervention, when discussing the practice of medicine, is generally a derogatory term used by critics of a medical model in which patients are viewed as passive recipients receiving external treatments provided by the physician that have the effect of prolonging life. Enough said.

TeenScreen has and does bribe students to take the questions they provide that are clinically worthless with such things as movie passes, gift certificates, and so forth. TeenScreen also instructs schools on how to circumvent the PPRA for students, or the Hatch Amendment. There are other legal liabilities that may be created in school districts that implement the TeenScreen program.

It was sold to others that TeenScreen primarily was preventing the incidences of suicide, and this is baseless and without merit. First of all, the rare teen suicides have been declining over the years. Some children likely are void of a concept of suicide…

Not asked is if the student has any family and community support for their issues. Of the symptoms the student acknowledges experiencing while answering the questions of TeenScreen, not asked is the duration of these symptoms. TeenScreen does not ask if the student has access to firearms- which is the most common method of suicide.

TeenScreen is nothing more than a front group for their big pharma sponsors who market psychotropic drugs, as teenscreen wears the mask of a support group for the youth. The activities of TeenScreen not only potentially damage children, but also invade their privacy quite obviously, and it is allowed too often, I say with great sadness…

By the pharmaceutical industry using these front organizations, they compromise scientific integrity under the color of authority. TeenScreen will increase drug use rather than prevent mental illness and the utilization of alternative treatment modalities.

TeenScreen is said to have a certified mental health professional as part of their screenings. I’m not sure what this person does for them, though…

Yet there is already an Act in place that is has the ability to form this screening function based on the Individuals with Disabilities (IDEA) act, and not TeenScreen. Of course, the pharmaceutical companies would not profit if this were to occur.

Yet the best action can and should be done by others. By parents. By many parents to know about this program.

If one desires to contact TeenScreen:

Leslie McGuire, M.S.W.
Director
Columbia University TeenScreen Program
1775 Broadway, Suite 610 or715
New York, NY 10019
Phone: (866) 833-6727
Fax: (212) 265-4454
E-mail: teenscreen@childpsych.columbia.edu
http://www.teenscreen.org

Dan Abshear

So, lets make one more aspect of being a woman, pregnancy, become a mental health emergency, as well as a medical emergency. All women will, by law, be screened and treated for mental illness during pregnancy. Who’s going to do this screening, on the basis of what? One old study found that pregnant women as a group were so far from the norm of mental health that a new term was coined: pregnancy psychosis. It described pregnancy women who acted pregnant: had mood swings, were easily upset, cried over nothing, etc. etc. Women who don’t act like this at all during pregnancy, are likely to really have a postpartum mood disorder. Developmentally, pregnancy is a break-up stage, leading to a woman being able to bond with her baby, and aquire the rew role of motherhood. It takes a skilled clinician to determine the difference between normal skatty pregnant thinking, and pathology.

Certainly, North American culture, with it’s view that people have value only as semi-ignorant consumers, feeds right into this. Maybe, as in Soylent Green, when the changes have been made, no one will remember when life was any different. So, don’t tell women about the work of the late Dr. Tom Brewer, and his eating plan for pregnant women, that has such excellent results. Don’t tell women that what and when they eat effects their feelings and emotions, as well as their blood sugar, and their overall health, and the baby’s health. Don’t give women proper care during pregnancy, and don’t tell them what proper care is. There you go, a ready-made cadre of consumers, who will be so grateful to their doctors and drug companies. Really, this is like having the Coast Guard throw people overboard without life jackets, and then being acclaimed and praised with gratitude for rescuing them. Only in this case, the rescue consists of prescriptions for mood altering drugs.

The pharmaceutical companies will only be happy when they can have all normal stages of life diagnosed as mental illness, and have doctors ready to widely prescribe from the cradle to the grave. We have infants taking anxiety medication, because they don’t want to sleep alone. We have the elderly on all kinds of medication, because good care and nutrition for them is so expensive, and their lives are so depressing. Now, we’ll make sure pregnant women take their pills, and keep on taking them after the baby is born. If the pharmaceutical companies have their way, soon we will all be prescribed something, and made to take it, and informed consent or the right to refuse treatment be damned.

Taking pills is a lazy way out, and people go along with the big Profiteers,
as they will not work and unite to solve the systemic problems in society CAUSING such. A nation that bombs and slaughters innocent children all
around the world has MORAL and cultural problems. These permeate down into all levels. The people need to wake up and start to THINK, really think about what they are supporting.

Depressions: Alot of the milder forms can be treated with natural products such as St Johns Wort….
But, the hard work for the citizens that have created this mess of a society includes self evaluation, evaluation of institutions, and what their country really stands for. Most, however, choose to go along with latest propaganda lines and brainwashing.

Why are more people not commenting?
What is being done here with this Mother’s Act is
representative of the whole Pharma/Medical system in the U.S.

Profit profit profit, at the expense of humans!

Most the depressions and so-called “mental disorders” in the U.S.
are due to the culture of violence, culture of profit, etc. It is the culture
in the U.S. that is the core problem. A country where about half its citizens support torture….there is something wrong!
There is little, if any support systems that most normal societies have
for one another. Homelessness is another example!

I am not … this seems to fit in rather nicely with the BushCo years … the growth of the totalitarian state that began … let’s see? Maybe when the first Australopithecene tilted upright? Certainly we were well on the way in 1776 despite the myth and all of the rhetoric.

I don’t recall you objecting before … so what is the big deal now?

RG the LG