TeenScreen - New York Times - Danger Signs

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By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 2 of 8 page(s)

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The study's authors also note that their findings are corroborated by "other information" which "argues against the possibility that the increase in treatment prevented an increase that would otherwise have occurred in suicide-related behaviors. Specifically, randomized controlled trials find only modest effects of treatment in reducing suicidality, even with optimal regimens."

Not only do SSRIs not prevent suicide, on July 21, 2004, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that during treatment with SSRIs, there was a "significantly higher risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts ... during the first nine days of treatment" and that children first starting treatment were 4 times more likely to think about suicide, and 38 times more likely to commit suicide. Children as young as five have committed suicide while taking these drugs, the study found.

When discussing the number of child suicides, the Time's Danger Signs article says about "1,500 succeed annually, making suicide the third-leading cause of death in teenagers after accidents and homicides."

I don't know where those statistics came from, or whether they are accurate. But think about it, there are 52 million kids in the nation's public school system, not counting the kids aged 0 to 5. And according to the CDC, in 2004, there were over 4,000,000 births in the US.

A statistically low number of 1,500 suicides is hardly worth subjecting millions of kids to an intrusive mental heath screening that is going to label a third with mental health disorders, after which they will be drugged with medications that carry a black box warning against their use with children because they can cause kids to commit suicide.

There is also absolutely no evidence to support the theory that TeenScreen can prevent suicide. In fact, in March 2004, the United States Preventive Special Task Force found no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality.

It also noted that there is limited evidence on the accuracy of screening tools to identify suicide risk in the primary care setting, including tools to identify those at high risk The task force also found no studies that addressed the potential harm of screening for suicide risks.

And finally, the USPSTF found insufficient evidence that treatment of those at high risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality. As a result, the task force said it could not determine the balance of benefits and harms of screening for suicide risk.

According Danger Signs, Shaffer went public with TeenScreen four years ago, offering it to schools at no charge. That assertion is another blatant misrepresentation. When TeenScreen went public in Ohio, tax payers in 3 counties were billed $15,000 each, to implement the scheme in Ohio schools.

In Tennessee, a drug company financed the first program at a Nashville High School, in which a third of the kids screened were steered to a mental health clinic.

And while testifying before Congress, Flynn, asked lawmakers to take funds earmarked for alcohol and drug abuse treatment programs and allow those tax dollars to be used to set up this drug profiteering scheme in public schools.

The Times should have done a bit of fact checking before it wrote: "It is given to students with their parents' consent." The reporter responsible for the article should ask Chelsea Rhodes and her parents in Indiana if the school had consent to test Chelsea and send her home diagnosed with 2 mental illnesses.

Telling an impressionable and vulnerable young girl that she is mentally ill is child abuse and school officials involved should be arrested. Chelsea will likely be affected by this labeling for life.

This next comment that indicates a serious deficiency in fact checkers at the Times states: "With only word-of-mouth marketing, the questionnaire has spread to 461 sites in 43 states."

Here again, the reporter might want to check and see how much money was funneled through TeenScreen to the PR firm that marketed the survey. The same firm that lists many of the major drug companies as clients on its web site.

Rabin Strategic Partners is one of the PR companies, that put together a publication called, Catch Them Before They Fall; How to Implement Mental Health Screening Programs for Youth as Recommended by the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health," according to Sue Weibert, The Genesis of President Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, OpEd News, December 15, 2005.

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