It's terrible when groups like The National Alliance
for the Mentally Ill, (NAMI), throw truth out the
window and just lie like crazy. I almost lost my
lunch when I read their screed, "Mental Health
Screening Will Save Lives" in NAMI E-News, January 19,
2005.
In what I think is a propaganda piece, NAMI states:
"Mental health screening is essential to address the
gross under-identification of youth with mental
illnesses and the tragic consequences that often
follow. Research shows that early identification and
intervention leads to improved outcomes and may lessen
long-term disability."
You've got to be kidding me.
NAMI foolishly goes on to call on "federal, state and
local leaders to implement mental health screening for
children and adolescents." I don't think for one
second there is a mental health care crisis in this
country centered on not enough children are receiving
mental health services. Put another way, legal drugs!
Our children are subjected to the folly of government
grief counselors anytime something tragic happens, and
our children already consume too many antidepressants
and antipsychotic drugs. It's no wonder the
SSRI/Antipsychotic drug industry boasts sales in the
tens of billions of dollars.
However, this does not faze NAMI one iota. Not one.
According to Dr. Peter Breggin, psychiatrist and
founder of The International Center for the Study of
Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), "These groups hold
national meetings that bring together drug advocates
to talk directly to consumers. They also put out
newsletters and other information that praise
medications. Sometimes they actively suppress
viewpoints that are critical of drugs - for example,
by discouraging the media from airing opposing
viewpoints."
From where rational people stand, NAMI appears as
nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking
chairs when it states, "Congressional members are
being regularly contacted by anti-psychiatry groups
who make false claims and distortions about screening,
including the claim that the President's New Freedom
Commission calls for mandatory screening without
parental consent."
Yet, the NFC report does in fact call on changing "the
state mental health code to increase to twelve the
number of times adolescents age 12-18 years can
receive mental health services without parental
consent."
Can NAMI - read? Or do they simply refuse to? NAMI
pushes mental health screening with the incorrect view
that suicide among young people is an epidemic. Truth
is, 1 out of 10,000 children commit suicide. A child
is three times more likely to die in an auto accident
than commit suicide, but our sense of urgency to drug
children remains strong. We need to start blaming
makers of psychotropic drugs more when children do
kill themselves, and stop blaming parents for their
children not being medicated.
According to "TEEN
SCREEN: A Front Group for the
Psycho-Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex":
In Pinellas County, Florida, an ongoing research
project has already established that a large majority
of teens who committed suicide were on psychotropic
drugs or had received psychiatric treatment. In the
years 2002 and 2003, 81% of the suicides were either
on psychotropic drugs or had received psychiatric
treatment. This percentage may rise as the research
continues.
So, we are being lied to when we're told mental health
screening will save lives. Mental health screening
benefits drug companies, despite the fact mental
health screenings are not based on scientific
evidence, but once screened, children can easily be
led down a road filled with psychiatric treatment and
drugs.
How many people know that Eli Lilly helped fund the
TeenScreen program with grants?
I agree with Dr. Marcia Angell, author of "The Truth
About The Drug Companies", who said this about
screening in a December 5, 2004 New York Post article,
"It's just a way to put more people on prescription
drugs."
Sometimes things are just this simple when you take
away the lies and doublespeak.
This being said, we all need to be very concerned that
the state of Illinois has already put a plan in place
that utilizes reccomendations from President Bush's
New Freedom Commission report on Mental Health. A
report, again, that NAMI fully supports. These
reccomendations are totalitarian and incredibly wrong:
- Include social/emotional developmental screening as a
part of required medical exams in schools (K, 4th and
entering 9th grade).
- Screen all pregnant women for depression prior to
delivery and periodically in the six months following
the birth of a child.
- The early detection of mental health problems in
children and adults through routine and comprehensive
testing will be an expected and typical occurrence.
Are we still living in America?
You have to ask yourself, is it really "American" to
want to find so much mental illness in people,
especially children? Does NAMI think children and
adolescents have any free will, or are they just
mental cases lacking proper identification? Why does
NAMI receive funding from drug companies?
I believe if NAMI really cared about children and
adolescents, they would advocate for the plethora of
alternatives to subjective mental disorders and
objectively dangerous drugs. What good does detecting
alleged mental illness do if a child, or adult for
that matter, has other environmental factors to
address that perfectly explain their shortcomings?
NAMI has the gall to compare government mental health
screening for us to legitimate screening for real
health care concerns. For example, we can see this
more clearly when we look at vision and hearing. I
truly wonder if the soul and core of NAMI is this:
Wouldn't we all be better off if we all were
prescribed at least one drug for our mental illness,
and we all were properly identified for the mental
health police?
It's time to relentlessly put President Bush's mental
health screening monster and groups like NAMI in their
place. I believe it's crystal clear; the true winners
of mandatory mental health screening would be groups
like NAMI, the mental health profession, and of
course, drug companies.
I'm not going to hold anything back. Mandatory mental
health screening is child abuse. Perhaps it's even a
form of child molestation. And we all know what
punishment child abusers and child molesters deserve.
Tony Zizza serves as Vice President of the State of Georgia
for the organization,
Parents For Label and Drug Free
Education.
