OpEdNews - Page 5 of Article: TeenScreen - Normal Kids Labeled Mentally Ill

In 2003, seventeen-year-old, Julie Woodward, took a test at North Penn High School, in North Wales, Pennsylvania, that said she was suffering from depression and two doctors convinced her parents, Tom and Kathy Woodward, to put her on Zoloft.

Julie's parents say they watched as her behaviors got steadily worse as soon as she began taking the drug. On the third day, Julie was arguing with her mother, and all of a sudden pushed her mother down to the floor.

Everyone in the family was shocked because Julie had never been violent before. "It was an out-of-character act," Tom Woodward notes.

Over the next few days, the usually calm Julie, became extremely irritable, could not sit still, and began pacing incessantly. She also became reclusive, her parents recall.

Six days after she began taking Zoloft, Julie hanged herself in the family's garage. Since their daughter's suicide, Tom and Kathy have become activists and have worked diligently in attempt to educate others parents about the dangers of SSRIs.

Sue Weibert, is an ardent activist against TeenScreen, and has been investigating the program for well over a year. She recently found that when a school enters into a contract to administer the TeenScreen survey, it must agree to screen a minimum of 200 children per season.

According to Ms Weibert, a recent study showed 33% of the kids screened test positive, and quoting a figure provided by TeenScreen's inventor, Dr David Shafer, seven years ago in 1999, the study said the cost was about $37 per child per screening.

So all total, 200 times a rounded off fee of $35 would amount to $7,000 in tax dollars just for the screening. After that, the 33% who screen positive are sent for a "further assessment" at an average cost of $250 to parents.

Screening promoters claim that currently, only one out of every 3 children who are mentally ill receives treatment. "That being the case," says Jan Eastgate, the International President of the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, "with mass screening already in play, if we do not act to prevent this, we can very shortly expect to have 30 million American children prescribed mind-altering drugs."

Parents are beginning to strike back against schools when their children are screened without their consent. Last year, an Indiana high school was sued for subjecting 15-year-old student to mental health testing with TeenScreen and diagnosing the teen with two mental illnesses, without her parents' knowledge or consent.

A Massachusetts department of education investigation recently determined that a counselor at the Thomas Hamilton Primary School violated federal law in April 2005, when a student, who was enrolled in a special education class due to a speech delay, was screened for ADHD, without parental consent.

The investigation followed complaints by the mother that the counselor had pressured her to put her daughter on drugs for 3 years. The mother said she did not give consent for a mental evaluation and pulled her children out of the school because of the incident.

Wilmette, Illinois, attorney, S Randolph Kretchmar, defends patients who are violated by the psychiatric industry, and says he is dead against drugging and labeling children with mental health disorders. "The great crime of psychiatry and the pushers of psychiatric drugs," he advises, "is that they have purposely confused us to sell their products."

"What the drugs do is disable people," he says, "it's just that simple."

"They may disable people from behaving badly," he explains, "but they also disable people in other ways, generally, neurologically."

He points out that a slow reader or difficult middle-schooler is no threat to public safety. "When it becomes popular," he says, "to neurologically disable children from being disagreeable to their teachers and their parents, we descend into some horrific barbarism, and sacrifice the future of the human race."

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