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TeenScreen - Normal Kids Labeled Mentally Ill
By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 1 of 6 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Evelyn Pringle - Writer
The list of mental disorders to chose from when diagnosing children mentally ill with TeenScreen, are "voted" into the Billing Bible by members of the American Psychiatric Association, and include, among others, conduct disorder, avoidant personality disorder, mathematics disorder, reading disorder, disorder of written expression, general anxiety disorder, nightmare disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and factious disorder.
A mental illness that drew a lot of ridicule recently, is called the "intermittent explosive disorder," for people who fly into occasional but unwarranted fits of rage.
Critics view TeenScreen is a main components in an overall pharmaceutical industry-backed marketing scheme pushed along by the NFC, aimed at recruiting new customers for psychiatric drugs. The NFC's report specifically identifies the target population Big Pharma is after when it states:
"Schools are in a key position to identify mental health problems early and to provide a link to appropriate services. Every day more than 52 million students attend over 114,000 schools in the U.S. When combined with the six million adults working at those schools, almost one-fifth of the population passes through the Nation's schools on any given weekday."
The TeenScreen survey is billed as a suicide prevention tool, but according to former government investigator, Allen Jones, "Teen Screen is a nefarious effort to recruit our children into the quagmire of biological psychiatry."
"The program employs dubious screening tools administered by non-professionals," he states. "It is based on misleading science and diagnostic criteria that would be downright laughable if the stakes were not so high," he adds.
"While the idea of screening kids for mental problems seems like a good idea, it ends up being nothing more than a Drugging Dragnet," says Jim Gottstein, an attorney who represents clients harmed by the psychiatric industrial complex.
"The high rate at which we are drugging America's children with psychotropics," he says, "is a national disgrace."
"This is junk science at it's worst," says Dr Jan Johnson, MD, "follow the money, the trail leads right back to the drug companies."
Activist groups against TeenScreen have posted an online petition and plan to send it to federal, state and local lawmakers. The petition can also be used to educate people about TeenScreen because it conveys many of the facts about mental health screening and can be printed off and presented to school board members or legislators. Persons interested in signing the petition can click on the following link: http://www.petitiononline.com/tscreen/petition.html As an additional bonus to Big Pharma, Bush set up the overall scheme so that tax payers will foot the bill for the implementation of the TeenScreen program. On October 21, 2004, he signed a bill into law that authorized $82 million to be spent over 3 years for programs like TeenScreen.
From there, the way the scheme is set up, if a child is diagnosed with a mental illness and the family can not afford the expensive regiment of psychiatric drugs, tax payers will fund the purchase of the drugs as well through public health care programs like Medicaid.
The fact is, Bush and most of his Republican puppets in Congress, would not be in office today if not for the financial support of Big Pharma. Drug companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year sending lobbyists to Washington to call in their markers by getting industry-friendly legislation passed.
According to a 2004, report by the consumer group, Public Citizen, drug companies, HMOs, their trade associations and industry-backed advocacy groups spent nearly $141 million on lobbying in 2003, and deployed over 950 lobbyists to do their bidding on Capitol Hill and at the White House.
In 2003, the top 10 drug makers and trade associations spent $55.8 million on lobbying, accounting for 60% of the industry's total lobbying expenditures. A record 24 companies and trade groups each spent $1 million, or more, on lobbying in 2002.
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