The Washington Post quoted Dr David Shaffer, the mastermind behind TeenScreen, and the program's director, Laurie Flynn, as saying the goal is not to put children on medication but to alert parents to a problem, which they can then discuss with a pediatrician, a psychiatrist or a clergy member.
People even temped to believe that claim need to watch TeenScreen's video-taped presentation at the annual convention of the country's top pharma-bankrolled front group known as the National Association for Mental Illness, obtained by ace researcher Sue Weibert, which shows the TeenScreen crew telling the army of NAMI members from all across the US that helping TeenScreen might require them to contact a child's insurance company to check on coverage or drive a child to an appointment with a shrink.
The video also shows the TeenScreen presenter passing around a pad of paper for the members to sign on as volunteers and agree to rise up against anyone who speaks out against TeenScreen when it moves into a new community.
The statement that no drug company money is involved in TeenScreen is also false. The May 2002 issue of the Update Newsletter reporting on the implementation of a TeenScreen program in Nashville, Tennessee said: "Some 170 students responded to a "TeenScreen" survey conducted by NAMI Nashville and Columbia University."
"TeenScreen was funded," the newsletter said, "through grants from AdvoCare and Eli Lilly." In fact, Eli Lilly funded the entire week of events, according to the newsletter.
Another fact not mentioned by TeenScreen to the Post, is that Laurie Flynn, was the former Executive Director of NAMI, until 2000 when she left to become Executive Director of the TeenScreen program.
Last time I checked, the NAMI website listed "Corporate Partners, Grants, and Foundations," as Abbott, AstraZoneca, Bristol-Meyers-Squibb, Eli Lilly, Forest Lab, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Jannsen, McNeil, Pfizer, and Wyeth.
So the truth is, during Flynn's 16 year reign over NAMI, Big Pharma paid her salary. Internal NAMI documents obtained by Mother Jones Magazine, showed that over a period of 3 years, from 1996 to mid-1999, eighteen drug companies gave NAMI a total of $11.72 million, and included Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer, Abbott Labs, Wyeth-Ayerst, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Critics say the TeenScreen promoters deliberately inflate suicide numbers. "They are pulling numbers out of thin air - falsely presuming that this crisis is about lack of access to drugs and calling for government to provide more and more of what many of us believe is the wrong kind of treatment," according to Robert Whitaker in an interview with Kelly O'Meara on May 16, 2003, in Insight News.
In truth, according to a government funded study in the Journal of the American Medical Association: "Despite a dramatic increase in treatment, no significant decrease occurred in suicidal thoughts, plans, gestures, or attempts in the United States during the 1990s," Trends in Suicide Ideation, Plans, Gestures, and Attempts in the United States, 1990-1992 to 2001-2003, JAMA. 2005;293:2487-2495
As for TeenScreen not advocating for any medication, that happens to be untrue as well. In 1999, Flynn, wrote the forward to a book that was written to specifically promote the atypicals titled, "Breakthroughs in Antipsychotic Medications: A Guide for Consumers, Families, and Clinicians," by Peter J Weiden, Ronald J Diamond.
On December 11, 2003, the New York Times reported that Dr Shaffer, at the request of a drug maker, attempted to block the recommendation to ban SSRI antidepressants from use in children in the UK by sending a letter to the British regulatory agency claiming there was insufficient data to restrict the use of the drugs in adolescents.
Critic say any child labeled mentally ill by TeenScreen will end up on drugs. "TeenScreen is purely and simply a marketing scam to sell psychotropic drugs," according anti-child drugging activist, Ken Kramer.
"Mass mental health screening of American children," Kramer says, "is absolutely, without a doubt, the most serious psychiatric threat to this nation."
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
