OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: TeenScreen - Prescription Drug Pusher In Schools

According to concerned parent, Diann Van Deusen, "this and every generation has a hard enough time growing up and finding their way into adulthood without some quack telling them they have a mental disorder when all they have is the normal teenage angst."

"Everybody else went through it too," she notes, "and survived to come out the other end into adulthood."

"But we did have it easier," she points out, "in the sense that we went through it without the added anxiety and confusion of being told that every little behavior we exhibited was in some way abnormal and a sign of a mental disease."

"We weren't put into victim status or mental health patient status and told to take a pill to handle it," she says.

"We were encouraged to do the best we could and handle our problems in a sensible way, governed by our family's value system," Ms Van Deusen notes. "Not by some drug company waiting like a beast to devour us for just being a kid."

TeenScreen's goal is to recruit customers but as part of the overall marketing scheme, Bush recommends that the "Texas Medication Algorithm Project" (TMAP), be used as a model program in all 50 states. In the most simple terms, TMAP is a list of drugs that doctors are required to prescribe when treating persons with specific mental illnesses who receive drugs paid for by government programs such as Medicaid.

The list contains the most high-priced psychotropic drugs on the market, including selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor antidepressants (SSRIs), like Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, and Effexor, and atypical antipsychotics, such as Zyprexa, Risperdal, Geodon, Seroquel, Clozaril, and Abilify.

This component of the scheme was created in Texas, while Bush was governor, in the 1990s, when these new drugs flooded the market, and drug makers realized they had a major problem because there was no way to promote the sale of psychiatric drugs, so they put their heads together and came up with the idea for TMAP.

The development of TMAP, and its guidelines for use, took place in Texas, while Bush was governor, and was funded by all the major drug companies who succeeded in having their drugs chosen to be on the list.

Texans are still paying a heavy price for being the first to allow the list to be used according to child psychologist and author, Dr John Breeding. "We are fighting off a swarm of efforts to codify New Freedom language into Texas law," he says.

"Driven by Big Pharma and psychiatry," he explains, "Texas is a focal point as the Texas Medication Algorithm Project started it all, the same folks were behind the New Freedom Commission, and the end result is more and more folks on drugs."

Psychiatrist, Dr Peter Breggin, a court-qualified medical expert, and author of the books, Talking Back to Prozac and The Anti-Depressant Fact Book, warns of the life-long harm that psychiatric drugs and a label of mentally illness can inflict.

"There is nothing worse that you can do to a human being in America today than give them a mental illness kind of label and tell them they need drugs," Dr Breggin advises.

The SSRIs these people are pushing with TeenScreen have been known to cause users to commit suicide, and they all carry black box warning labels to that affect. Furthermore, they are not even FDA approved for use with children.

A study conducted at the Ottawa Health Research Institute in Canada, published in the February 2005, British Medical Journal, reviewed over 700 clinical trials involving 87,650 patients, and assessed the suicide risks with SSRIs, by counting suicide attempts by patients who were treated with the drugs for conditions other than depression such as panic disorder, bulimia, and sexual dysfunction.

The study determined that even patients who were not depressed to begin with, and were taking SSRIs for other reasons, were more than twice as likely to attempt suicide as patients given placebos.

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