Bush "Mental Health Screen" Slammed: 2 News Articles
BELOW are 2 short news articles published
this week covering criticisms of plans by
President Bush to make "mental health
screening" common throughout the
USA for adults and children.
The 1st is a very brief news article
about a new campaign by MindFreedom
using humor to warn the USA public.
The 2nd is a serious article about
how parents of a "screened" 15-year-old
in Indiana filed a lawsuit against
mental health screening on 19 Sept. 2005.
At BOTTOM are actions you can take, and
a new public statement by MindFreedom
with 6 reasons to stop screening now.
~~~~~~~~~~
_Eugene Weekly_ Eugene, Oregon, USA
29 September 2005
Northwest of Normality
The Eugene-based nonprofit MindFreedom
International will be screening people at
the Eugene Celebration for "normality."
The street theater this weekend is
inspired by President Bush's announced
plans for nationwide mental health
screenings for all adults and children.
"More than 1,000 people were screened at
this year's Oregon Country Fair with no
normality detected," says MindFreedom
Director David Oaks. "Every rumor of
normality has thankfully always been a
false alarm."
Watch for clowns in white coats and red
noses screening the public with rubber
chicken wands to try to spot any
normality, says Oaks, "which has still
not been discovered."
Regarding the White House screening plan,
Oaks says, "Watching for troubled people
sounds good. But the public should know
these plans are heavily influenced and
promoted by the psychiatric drug
industry. We want better advocacy and
alternatives first, before mental health
corporations use schools to recruit more
customers for psychiatric drugs."
MindFreedom is a U.N.-recognized NGO
promoting human rights for mental health
consumers and psychiatric survivors. For
more information or to help, stop by
booth #55 at the Celebration, call
345-9106, visit
http://www.MindFreedom.org or e-mail
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2005/09/29/news.html#2~~~~~~~~~~
_British Medical Journal_ 1 October 2005
US teenager's parents sue school over
depression screening test
New York
by Jeanne Lenzer
The parents of an Indiana teenager have
filed a suit in a federal court in the
state's Northern District, charging that
school officials violated their privacy
rights and parental rights by subjecting
their daughter to a mental health
screening examination without their
permission.
The suit is seen as significant because
President Bush has promoted a
controversial plan to encourage
widespread mental health screening for
people "of all ages" in the United States
(BMJ 2004;328;1458). The screening
programme at the centre of the legal
suit, TeenScreen, was endorsed as a
"model" programme by President Bush's New
Freedom Commission on Mental Health.
The complaint, filed on 19 September,
charges that in December 2004 Chelsea
Rhoades, then a 15 year old student at
Penn High School, Mishawaka, was told she
had obsessive compulsive disorder and
social anxiety disorder after she took
the TeenScreen examination. Chelsea has
spoken out against the screening and,
with her parents, alleges in the
complaint that "a majority" of the
students "subjected to TeenScreen" with
her were also told they had "some mental
or psychological disorder."
The Rhoades family charges that
TeenScreen test results "are highly
subjective" and that "there is a lack of
evidence that the screening actually
results in a decreased risk of suicide
attempts."
On 21 September, just a few days after
the Rhoades suit was filed, Rabin
Strategic Partners, the public relations
firm for TeenScreen, issued a press
release with TeenScreen announcing that
the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration had awarded
grants of more than $9.7m (£5.5m; ?8.1m)
to four states to implement "mental
health screenings, using the Columbia
University TeenScreen programme."
The programme is currently in use at 424
sites in 43 states, the press release
says. The money was made available under
the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, which
President Bush signed into law in October
2004 to promote programmes to prevent
suicide in young people.
Columbia University's TeenScreen, which
urges "universal" voluntary screening for
all teenagers, has come under fire for
offering free cinema passes and other
inducements to teenagers in the hope of
encouraging them to return parental
consent forms (BMJ 2005;331:592 (17
Sep)). The programme has also been
criticised by the Rutherford Institute, a
non-profit civil liberties organisation,
for using "passive consent," in which
only parents who do not want to have
their children screened have to sign a
form and send it in to the school. If the
school does not receive a form, it is
assumed that the parents do not object.
Laurie Flynn, national programme director
of TeenScreen, said that only 15% to 20%
of schools use passive screening and that
the choice to require the active consent
of parents was left up to local schools.
"We name active consent a preferred best
practice, we train applicants to use it
and we offer templates to assist them in
doing so. [But] in some school districts
passive consent is the norm for all
student health activities," she said.
Michael Wilkes, professor of medicine and
director of adolescent medicine at the
University of California, Davis, said he
was worried about the widespread use of
mental health screening among
adolescents. "We're way overtreating
depression with medications," he said.
"It's often very hard to distinguish [an
adolescent] who is truly depressed from a
teen who is experiencing developmentally
normal cyclic variations in mood. Affect
in teens can vary greatly from day to
day. A student who didn't get invited to
the prom or who broke up with his
girlfriend could look depressed one day
but not the next. What is needed isn't
just more money for screening but money
to help teens who want help. What's the
point of screening to find a problem if
doctors are either unavailable or unable
to help?"
President Bush's plan, Achieving the
Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care
in America, is at
http://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov/r ... Report.htmhttp://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/ ... /714-a/DC1- end articles -
ACTIONS:
* Please respond to the above article
on the BMJ rapid response web site here:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletter- ... 7519/714-a* Please forward this alert.
~~~~~~~~~~
1 October 2005
MindFreedom International Statement
About Mental Health Screening:
President Bush proposes making "mental
health screening" a "common practice" for
adults and children.
Here is why MindFreedom International
opposes these "mental health screening"
programs.
President Bush and his New Freedom
Commission on Mental Health recommend
screening all Americans for mental health
problems starting with youth through their
schools. This screening has already
started in a number of schools.
We call for the immediate halt to these
screening programs. Instead, we call for the
implementation of far better alternatives
for mental and emotional care.
Until a broken and dangerous mental
health system is fixed, mental health
screening just adds fuel to the fire.
Screening programs threaten to place
hundreds of thousands of American youth
on a conveyor belt type approach toward
psychiatric labeling and drugging.
Current mental health screening programs
have specific steps. A screened
individual is evaluated for a diagnosis. A
diagnosed individual is frequently
prescribed psychiatric drugs. For some
the end result has even been forced
drugging over the objections of the
subject and their family (source: Mother
Jones 5/05).
The vast majority of Americans want to
ensure that troubled kids and adults
receive humane and safe help. However,
there is ample evidence that the mental
health system in the United States is now
causing a great deal of harm.
For example, the mental health system is
based on a diagnostic labeling system
that has been shown to be unscientific.
Also, the Food and Drug Administration
has recently acknowledged that
anti-depressants carry serious risks to
children, adolescents, and adults. Other
psychotropic drugs have also been shown
to carry serious risks of harm. This is
of particular concern because of the
skyrocketing rates of prescription of
psychotropic drugs of all kinds for
children and adolescents.
Some proponents of screening argue that
they are not calling for "universal" or
"manadatory" screening. But whatever
words are used to describe it, the fact
is that massive and extensive screening
programs heavily influenced by the
psychiatric drug industry are entering
many schools today.
When the President of the United States
announces he wants mental health
screening of youth to be a "common
practice" that is a lot of pressure on
schools, kids and families. This is
exactly what President Bush did when he
endorsed his New Freedom Commission's
Goal Four.
In order to provide help for people who
need and want it without causing
additional harm, the following safeguards
need to be implemented:
(1) STOP CURRENT SCREENING PROGRAMS
IMMEDIATELY.
The moment one applies mental health
screening methods such as "TeenScreen"
and "TMAP" on the basis of flawed
diagnostic systems and questionnaires,
one is making the problem worse.
Screening misses some people with serious
emotional problems on the one hand, and,
on the other hand, mistakenly classifies
other people as pathological.
Questionnaires and formal diagnostic
interviews often fail to catch kids who
are going to kill themselves, for example.
(2) PAY MORE ATTENTION TO YOUTH IN A
COMMON SENSE WAY.
A child ought to have the opportunity to
voluntarily talk with caring adults about
the things that are upsetting them in
whatever setting they are, including
schools. That non-medical, common sense
approach is better because it yields real
life qualitative information, not
simplistic quantitative data like
questionnaires.
(3) FULLY INFORM FAMILIES.
The public needs to be educated that many
current mental health programs may be
harmful to one's health. The public needs
to hear that psychiatric drug companies
helped create and promote many of these
screening programs to get more customers
for the highest priced drugs.
Fully informed consent should always be
required in any kind of mental health
care. Full informed consent means
explaining to children and their parents
or guardians about the full range of
approaches that can be helpful. Families
need to know about the hazards of
psychotropic drugs and the lack of
clinical trials for young subjects.
Today, primarily only two approaches are
recommended almost exclusively: drugs and
traditional types of psychotherapy which
which tend to be rigid and limited.
(4) END THE BIAS TOWARD PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS
IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE.
For families who do seek mental and
emotional care, there ought to be no
cookie-cutter like "algorithm" or
"protocol" that unfairly favors the use
of psychiatric drugs above all other
options. The psychiatric drug industry
has unfair influence throughout the
mental health system making it unsafe.
Physical, nutritional or environmental
pollutant problems are seldom addressed.
(5) PROVIDE HUMANE AND SAFE ALTERNATIVES.
A wide range of alternatives to drugs and
traditional psychotherapy must be available
to all who seek them. When there are only
one or two "choices" for those who are
desperate, that is one of the most insidious
and subtle kinds of coercion.
(6) ADVOCACY AT ALL LEVELS.
Effective advocacy programs, including
peer support when possible, ought to be
widely available to help people gain
access to the employment, educational and
other social services they may choose.
Advocates ought to help support the
empowerment of individuals and families
who wish to avoid unethical professionals
and mental health agencies who may exploit
and harm them. Advocates must help our
democracy get more "hands on" with the
mental health system.
Making screening "common practice"
threatens the health and human rights of
thousands of Americans. Therefore we call
for an immediate halt to these screening
programs.
MindFreedom International
http://www.MindFreedom.org~~~~~~~~~~
This news alert has been
forwarded as a free public service
by MindFreedom International.
You may read more information about
President Bush's plans to make mental
health screening of adults and youth
"common" at
http://www.MindFreedom.org.
Since 1987 MindFreedom has won victories
for human rights in the mental health
system. MindFreedom unites 100 sponsor
and affiliate groups and thousands of
members.
MindFreedom is one of the few totally
independent groups in the mental health
field with no funding from governments,
drug companies, the mental health system
or religions.
The MindFreedom mission calls for a
nonviolent revolution in the mental
health system. Are you ready?
TO JOIN or RENEW your MindFreedom
membership please go here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/join.shtmlFor the all-new improved MAD MARKET of books
and products to support human rights campaigns
in mental health go here:
http://www.madmarket.orgFeatured book: Peter Lehmann's newest handbook,
_Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs_ written by
28 different psychiatric survivors and allies.
MindFreedom International
454 Willamette, Suite 216 - POB 11284
Eugene, OR 97440-3484 USA
http://www.mindfreedom.orgemail:
office@mindfreedom.org fax: (541) 345-3737
office phone: (541) 345-9106
USA toll free: 1-877-MAD-PRIDE / 1-877-623-7743
MIND YOUR FREEDOM: United Action for Human
Rights.
Accredited by the United Nations as a
Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with
Consultative Roster Status.
"Human salvation lies in the hands of the
creatively maladjusted." - Martin Luther King,
Jr.
