Perhaps TeenScreen is trying to distance themselves from their pharmaceutical connections because they realize they need to be more guarded of their "alliances." This will be a difficult task for them however as TeenScreen, from its inception was developed by psychiatrist David Shaffer who is a consultant and apologist of pharmaceutical companies. Shaffer has served as an expert witness for various drug companies and as a consultant on various psychotropic drugs.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) sent out a press release on May 8, 2000, that said Shaffer was their president and they had just released a national survey they had done on suicide. The funder of the survey? Pfizer, Inc. Shaffer's AFSP has also received $1,250,000 from Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (http://www.psychsearch.net/advisors.html)
Though the goal of screening may sound admirable, its actual intent is a wolf in sheep's clothing, skulking around, preying on the sympathies of concerned parents and legislators, despite the outcries of the thousands who have been harmed or who recognize in psychiatry's duplicitous methods the terrible threat not only to the children of this country but to all of our individual freedoms.
Right now there are plans afoot by proponents of mental health screening to screen everyone in the country. President Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has opened the door for psychiatry to now spread to all sectors of our society. This includes seniors, school children, and pregnant and new mothers. Even babies and toddlers are now being drugged and are targeted as the up-and-coming group of potential patients. Tell me, just how does one determine if a baby is depressed?
Is this to be the fate of our citizenry, checking in routinely for mental health "exams" which will adjudicate our need for medication? Is this what we want for our children? Are we so scared by all the propaganda that our children will kill themselves without intervention by psychiatry that we would subject them to such ridiculous, ineffective and even dangerous programs such as TeenScreen?
Look at the FDA Black Box warnings that are prevalent on many psychotropic medications. They caution against risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents but are used as "treatment" for depression and suicidiality. Find out about the many high profile school shootings and the suicides by children already under psychiatric care or on psychotropic medication. Examine the deaths from heart failure and other medical causes from these drugs, not to mention the mental effects. Is this fraudulent practice to be regarded as the "savior" of our children?
Beyond the obvious goal of billions of dollars into psychiatric and pharmaceutical coffers - 3.3 billion dollars realized on Zoloft sales alone in 2005 - will we see a society where the continued labeling and fraudulent "diagnosing" of our children by unscientific means will be the catalyst by which their rights and personal freedoms will be usurped? Will this medicated homogenizing of all of our children's singular gifts for the spurious purpose of "protecting" them result in children with less thoughts of suicide? Or will we label and medicate our future's brightest hopes for no more reason than they were unfortunate enough to wrongly answer their survey? Yes, even psychiatrist David Shaffer stated that TeenScreen "does identify a whole bunch of kids who aren't really suicidal, so you get a lot of false-positives." (84%)...
If the billions of dollars that are now spent by US taxpayers to medicate our country's children, were funneled into workable programs instead of medications, would we be more likely to effect real changes for the better? If our focus was centered more on educational or social activities and programs which fostered communication, compassion for abused or neglected children, productive ideals, and which promoted an understanding of life's worth and capabilities, would we not see changes in our children which would spread into the future like an ever widening road, instead of the dead end path upon which we have now set so many children?
No one can say why one child will commit suicide and not another. Life is not a predictable activity and people's viewpoints of life are as varied as the people that possess them. Who's to say that by locating a particular set of feelings in a child that that child will be at risk or not? Life cannot be distilled down to such predictable uniformity. Perhaps the best we can do is to provide a caring environment that nurtures our children's goals and offer a supportive shoulder for their concerns and troubles. Perhaps the worst we can do is to take from them their right to best their own demons and in so doing condemn them to lives as victims of every pharmaceutically contrived chemical reaction that will course in their brains.
http://www.petitiononline.com/tscreen/petition.html
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