A Declaration of Refusal to Comply with any New Freedom Commission Mandate for Universal Mental Health Screening of Children in the Schools
Wildest Colts Resources, in alliance with Parents for Label and Drug Free Education, invites all caring adults to sign our declaration, stating our intention to defy any governmental attempts to install universal mental health screening of our school children. Join us and solemnly declare that we will not allow our children to be the subjects of any form of implementation of New Freedom Commission recommendations to screen our children for signs of “mental illness.”
(PRWEB) September 9, 2004 -- Our declaration of refusal is a vigorous
response to and rejection of the recommendations of the President's New Freedom
Commission on mental health policy in the United States, a health policy that
would mandate virtually universal mental health screening, including the 52
million children and 6 million adults in the public schools. We prefer to call
it the "New Intrusion Commission." Its recommendations are a direct assault on
child and family privacy, and a real threat to our children's well-being.
Already, about 9 million school age children are on very dangerous psychotropic
drugs, all for alleged "mental illnesses" like so-called ADHD, none of which
have been validated as real diseases by scientific medicine. The New Freedom
Commission wants to even more vigorously pursue the labeling and drugging of our
children, by screening ALL children and adults in the public schools (and
elsewhere) for signs of possible "mental illness." This really means they are
actively pursuing an expansion of the child market for psychiatric
pharmaceuticals.
This declaration will be used in our effort to halt the
policy recommendations of the New Freedom Commission. We invite all concerned
citizens to sign on to this declaration and defend our space to allow our
children to grow and learn without labels and drugs, and to make parenting
decisions without pressure from various governmental agents.
The New
Freedom Commission report states that “Schools are in a key position to identify
mental health problems early, and to provide a link to appropriate services.” We
know that many of the New Freedom commissioners are linked directly or
indirectly to the Texas Medical Algorithm Project (TMAP), which provides
formulas recommending specific psychotropic drugs to treat various “mental
illnesses.” According to whistleblower reports, TMAP pushes an off-label drug
marketing scheme that appears to skirt federal law. We know, therefore, that
this commission’s recommendations are intended to encourage an expansion of the
fact that “appropriate services” in today’s psychiatric world means psychotropic
drugs, and that there are already an estimated 9-million school-age children on
psychiatric drugs. We consider this to represent a tragic situation, and a clear
and present danger to our children.
This extraordinary intrusion of
psychiatry into our schools shows a blatant disregard of the public will, as
demonstrated in the first four years of this millennium by a number of
resolutions, education department statements and state laws, all defending a
parent’s right to make treatment decisions for a child without coercion, and a
child’s right to education without psychiatric labeling and drugs. Through 2003,
there have been at least 46 state bills or resolutions supporting parental
choice, in 28 states, that have either passed, or are still pending action,
across the United States.
We ask that our legislators and educational
leaders discard the New Freedom Commission recommendations of extraordinary
intrusion of psychiatry into our schools, and refocus on authentic
education.
We object to the New Freedom Commission recommendations for
many reasons; these include scientific, legal, and moral or philosophic
objections.
Scientifically, we are aware that the Commission report is
based on the same pseudoscience that has already resulted in the psychiatric
drugging of an estimate 9 million school-age children, over 15% of our young
people. The two most important scientific objections are:
1. No
children’s behavioral problem routinely seen by a psychiatrist or other
physician has been scientifically demonstrated to be of biological or genetic
causation. There is no objective test, no confirmatory physical or chemical
abnormality—for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional
Defiant Disorder (ODD), Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, or any of
the other childhood diagnoses popular among psychiatrists. These diagnoses are
wholly subjective, based on judgments of what is and isn’t normal
behavior.
2. Psychiatric drugs are dangerous: they are toxic and
potentially lethal. There were 186 Ritalin-related heart deaths reported to the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during the 1990s. Because the system of
reporting is voluntary, experts believe that this figure represents only 1-10
percent of the actual number of deaths. In other words, from this one drug
alone, during a ten-year period, there were 1,800 to 18,000 deaths. In addition,
because of evidence indicating their potential for inducing suicidal thinking
and behavior in children, the United Kingdom has banned, for children, the use
of all but one of the antidepressants known as Selective Serotonin Reuptake
Inhibitors (SSRI’s such as Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Effexor and Remeron). The FDA
is investigating the matter.
Legally, we strongly insist on two revered
concepts in United States law, the doctrines of informed consent and the right
to privacy. The doctrine of informed consent must be interpreted to mean that
parents have a legal right to sufficient information necessary to make a fully
informed choice on behalf of their children. Any mandatory mental health
screening is a gross violation. The right to privacy is a fundamental American
value; we see mandatory mental health screening as direct violation of a liberty
interest under Fourteenth Amendment due process rights.
We consider New
Freedom recommendations to be a serious threat not only to our educational
system, but most importantly to the development and well-being of our children.
Therefore, we insist that any New Freedom Commission policy recommendations that
put our children at risk for unwarranted intrusion, labeling and psychiatric
drugging be immediately discarded.
The Declaration of Refusal may be
viewed at http://www.ablechild.org/declaration%20of%20refusal.aspx .
Please join us as we solemnly declare that we will not allow our children to be
the subjects of any form of implementation of New Freedom Commission
recommendations to screen our children for signs of “mental illness.”
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/9/prweb156052.htm