Compulsory Drugging of Children I - Epidemic of Forced Drugging Strikes!
Under the guise of "Public Health" and "Mental Health", our children are being exposed to highly profitable, but dangerous and potentially lethal medication against parents' wishes. In this series we will take a look at a number of the ways in which forced drugging of children is either already taking place or is in the works. Using deceptive and incorrect "information", unvalidated and unscientific "screening" tools created by the drug companies, and the increasingly invasive police power of the state to override parental rights, children are exposed to iatrogenic - doctor induced - mistreatment, removal from their homes to dangerous and abusive foster care, and the emotional trauma of these abuses. These violations of our health freedoms and of the future of our country - since we are damaging huge numbers of our young people - must stop. And it is up to us to stop it.
Phony Screening, Fantasy Diagnoses, Real Damage
Phony "screening" of children and adolescents in programs such as "Teen Screen" is a huge industry and a major health hazard since they frequently result in unwarranted, knee jerk diagnoses of children and, in the vast majority of cases, in prescriptions for dangerous psychiatric drugs.
Fact: Teen Screen has no scientific validity and is a marketing ploy to sell dangerous drugs, which may cause irreversible harm to children and teenagers, to a new market: healthy children.
Fact: Teen Screen has never been shown to reduce suicides in children, but antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs are well documented to increase the risk of suicidal thoughts, attempts, and successful suicides. In fact, these drugs often carry "Black Box" warnings to alert consumers to the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and actions in the people who take them.
Here is what PsychSearch.net has to say about Teen Screen: TeenScreen is a very controversial so-called "diagnostic psychiatric service", a.k.a. suicide survey, done on children who are then referred to psychiatric treatment. The evidence suggests that the objective of the psychiatrists who designed TeenScreen is to place children so selected on psychotropic drugs.
"It's just a way to put more people on prescription drugs," said Marcia Angell, a medical ethics lecturer at Harvard Medical School and author of "The Truth About Drug Companies". She said such programs will boost the sale of antidepressants - even after the FDA in September ordered a "black box" label warning that the pills might spur suicidal thoughts or actions in minors. (The New York Post, December 5, 2004)
TeenScreen is based on the thoroughly discredited "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual".
How Teen Screen Works
TeenScreen lures kids as young as 9 years old into taking the suicide survey by offering them free movie passes, food coupons, "I completed TeenScreen" stress balls, pizza parties, and candy bars - if they consent to the procedure.
One tactic TeenScreen officials use is to sell the child on the suicide survey first, and after they have the child's agreement, they later contact parents.
TeenScreen Project Coordinator, Kathleen Cigich, was quoted as saying: "We found early on that sending out letters directly to parents is prohibitively time consuming and gets a low response rate. We thought, why not go to students themselves and offer a $5 video store coupon to anyone who brings back a parental consent form within a two-day turnaround period. It works. Our response rate is extremely high."
Passive Consent: No Parents Need Respond
TeenScreen also utilizes a "passive consent form" which requires no written parental approval. The passive consent form is sent home to parents and if they DON'T return it, TeenScreen considers that the parents approve. TeenScreen officials favor passive consent because they say it boosts their chances of screening kids to 95% as opposed to the written parental consent technique. What if the child forgets to bring the consent form home? What happens if the parent is too busy to refuse in writing? They've consented in the eyes of TeenScreen personnel.
Implanting Ideas
Next, the child is given a paper and pencil test over about 10 minutes with highly suggestive and/or meaningless questions like:
Normal children answering honestly will endorse at least one of the first 5 questions. That is enough to get them "diagnosed" with one supposed mental health disorder or another.
Check, Check, Check, Have We Got a Diagnosis for You!
The child then sees a mental health adviser and a check list is administered to confirm the "diagnosis" and earn the child a referral. Click here to see the mental health check list used to assign a diagnosis. Next, it's off to a psychiatrist and then the real tragedy begins. Up until now, it was merely a matter of violating parental rights, persuading children they are ill when they may just be normal children, taking time away from legitimate school activities, inserting intrusive and potentially dangerous ideas into impressionable kids, and damaging the self-image and ego of the child (perhaps permanently). Once a psychiatrist gets involved, however, things get very, very dangerous.
When Parental Judgement Becomes Medical Neglect
Many states in the US have given themselves the authority to compel parents to medicate their children even if they do not believe the child should be taking meds, OR RISK LOSS OF PARENTAL CUSTODY. The child will be either medicated by the parents (often under Court order) or taken away from the family and placed in foster care. Children in foster care are, sadly, all too frequently abusively medicated, sexually and physically molested/abused and emotionally damaged, sometimes to horrifying degrees. I know. I was the Child Psychiatrist for the Westchester County Department dealing with children in foster care for about a decade, and I am well aware of the abysmal conditions children in other states experience as well.
In some states, the drugging craze has gone so far that school personnel are permitted to refuse to allow children into school if they are not medicated with potent, and dangerous, psychiatric drugs.
Good Bills to Protect Kids from Bad Public Policy
Two bills now before Congress will prevent this kind of abuse and prevent the use of Federal funds for mental health screening such as Teen Screen. S. 891, the "Child Medication Safety Act" was introduced into the Senate by Senators Inhoff and Coburn on March 15, 2007. Here is the heart of the Act:
SEC. 2. REQUIRED POLICIES AND PROCEDURES.
(a) In General- As a condition of receiving funds under any program or activity administered by the Secretary of Education, not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, each State shall develop and implement policies and procedures prohibiting school personnel from requiring a child to obtain a prescription for substances covered by section 202(c) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812(c)) or a psychotropic drug as a condition of attending school or receiving services.
(b) Rule of Construction- Nothing in subsection (a) shall be construed to create a Federal prohibition against teachers and other school personnel consulting or sharing classroom-based observations with parents or guardians regarding a student's academic performance or behavior in the classroom or school, or regarding the need for evaluation for special education or related services under section 612(a)(3) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (20 U.S.C. 1412 (a)(3)).
(c) Prohibition of Payment of Funds- No Federal education funds may be paid to any local educational agency or other instrument of government that uses the refusal of a parent or legal guardian to provide a substance covered by section 202 (c) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812(c)) or a psychotropic drug for such individual's child of a charge of child abuse, child neglect, education neglect, or medical neglect until the agency or instrument demonstrates that it is no longer using such refusal as a basis of a child abuse, child neglect, education neglect, or medical neglect charge.
Let Your Congressman/woman Know You Support This Sensible Law
Constitutional Rights, Parental Rights, Civil Rights, Normal Childhood
Developmental Phases and Stages and good old fashioned Common Sense make it clear that this bill is badly needed. Government funds should not fund medical fascism, and Senators Inhoff and Coburn are to be commended for their willingness to defy the market needs of Big Pharma and support the parental rights and developmental stages of parents and children.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org