[Ron] Paul amendment against mental health screening fails

[Ron]
Paul amendment against mental health screening fails

 Amendment to federal appropriations bill, HR 3010

EdAction Alert —
June 27, 2005

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“Pretty soon we’ll have a
syndrome for short, fat Irish guys with a Boston accent, and I’ll be
mentally ill.”

“Mental
health is the new normal,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, June
23, 2005.

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        Pharmaceutical industry profits won out
against individual and parental rights last Friday when the Paul
amendment that would have prohibited federal taxpayer funding for new
universal mental health screening failed in a roll call vote on the
floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressman and physician
Ron Paul introduced the amendment against

government-sponsored and pharmaceutical-industry-supported universal
mental health screening programs. The Labor/Health and Human
Services/Education appropriations bill, HR 3010, was then passed with
$26 million for “state incentive transformation grants” to fund
implementation of the New Freedom Commission’s recommendations for
universal mental health screening and psychiatric drug treatment. This
is the same amount requested by the President in his budget. 
 
        The Paul amendment simply stated:

 “None of the
funds made available in this Act may be used to create or implement
any new universal mental health screening program.” 

        Ninety-three Republicans were joined by four
Democrats in supporting the Paul amendment. In Minnesota, Gutkneckt,
Kennedy, and Kline voted yes. Ramstad, McCollum, Oberstar, Peterson, and
Sabo voted with the pharmaceutical companies. Thirty-two members
abstained. Thirty-two members abstained. (See the voting record at

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll317.xml.)

        Please use this vote to educate your Member of
Congress on this issue. We urge you to please thank the Members who
voted yes, especially if they are your own Representatives. If your
Member voted “No” to the Paul amendment, please contact him or her
immediately to express your displeasure. Provide them with background
information that is available
on our
website. Press your Representative to understand the urgency of this
issue. Ask him or her to support

HR 181, The Parental Consent Act which will be another opportunity
to address your concerns.

        Urge
your Member of Congress to join the 44 other Members in
co-sponsoring HR 181. Many prominent organizations have so far joined in
supporting this legislation or expressed concerns about child mental
health screening, labeling and drugging. None of them take money from
drug companies or other special interests. Included are:

Able Child   
Alliance for Human Research Protection (www.ahrp.org)

American Association of Physicians and Surgeons
American Policy Center

Concerned Women for America

Eagle Forum

EdWatch /

EdAction
Family Research Council
Free Congress Foundation
Gun Owners of America
Home School Legal Defense Association

International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology
(ICSPP) 
Libertarian Party

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP)

Psych Rights
Republican Liberty Caucus

The Liberty Committee

We Hold these Truths        

As you might expect, well-funded lobbyists for those
pushing universal mental health screening pulled out all the stops and
demaoguery . One organization that has received millions of dollars from
the pharmaceutical industry, for example, sent out the following false
information:

“Supporters of
this amendment claim that early screening would undermine parental
rights, when in fact, parents will always have the right to control
whether their child is screened or given services.” [Children and
Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder – CHADD]

See

“Medicating Aliah” (access code MJZL6Y) for an example of how false
that statement is. Testimony from Cong. Paul (Texas) during the debate
on the House floor is as follows:

“This does not
deny any funds for any testing of those individuals who may show
signs of mental illness. It only denies funding for any universal,
read by many as mandatory, which is a bit of overkill as far as I am
concerned. There is $26 million in this bill for these programs.
Eight States have already been involved, and three more have applied
for grants.

   “The main
reason why I oppose this is I think there is a lot of overtreatment
of young people with psychotropic drugs. This has been going on for
a lot of years, and there are a lot of bad results, and once we talk
about universal testing of everybody, and there is no age limit,
matter of fact, in the recommendation by the New Freedom Commission,
there is a tendency for overdiagnosis and overuse of medication.
There are as many complications from overuse of medication as there
is with prophylactic treatment.

   ‘There is no
evidence now on the books to show that the use of this medication
actually in children reduces suicide. Matter of fact, there are
studies that do suggest exactly the opposite. Children on
psychotropic drugs may well be even more likely to commit suicide.
It does not mean that no child ever qualifies for this, but to
assume there is this epidemic out here that we have to test
everybody is rather frightening to me.

   “Matter of
fact, when the State gets control of children, they tend to overuse
medications like this. Take, for instance, in Texas, 60 percent of
the foster children are on medication. In Massachusetts, it is close
to 65 percent. In Florida, 55 percent of the children in foster home
care are receiving these kinds of medication.

   “Once again,
I want to make the point that this does not deny funding for
individual children who show signs that they may need or they have a
problem and need to be tested. It is just to make sure that this is
not universal and not be mandatory and that parental rights are
guarded against and that the parent is very much involved”

Rep. Regula (Ohio)
inserted the same distortions that are being aggressively circulated by
the special interests:

“The sponsor
mentions $26 million, and let me point out that the funds provided
in this bill that respond to recommendations put forward in the
final report of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental
Health, “Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in
America,” go toward State incentive grants for transformation to
support the development of comprehensive State mental health plans,
and has absolutely no funding included for universal mental health
screening. So the $26 million has nothing to do with this amendment
as far as universal mental health screening.”

Rep. Obey
(Wisconsin) continued the false statements:

“there are no
plans for anyone in the Federal Government to conduct universal
screening, and there are no funds in this bill for any such
purpose.”

Rep. Murphy
(Pennsylvania) joined in with the lies of organized psychiatry and the 
pharmaceutical industry:

“This amendment
is another witch hunt against mental illness and its passage will
only serve to further stigmatize mental illness.”

Rep. Paul responded:

“Let me tell
Members, people in this country have been well informed about this,
and they do not like this program. I also would like to quote from
the New Freedom Commission …They never say `’mandatory,” but they
never say “voluntary’  ‘What they say is `’universal.” How can you
have something universal if you are not going to be testing
everybody? Also from the Freedom Commission, it should be for
consumers of all ages, screen for mental disorders in primary health
care across the life span. These are the guidelines of the New
Freedom Commission, as well as saying the schools must be partners
in the mental health care of our children.

Rep. Regula
continued the distortion, and he denied the moves by states such as
Illinois and Minnesota to do mental health screening of children based
on the New Freedom Commission by saying:

“There is no
universal mental health screening in this bill. Secretary Leavitt
has made it clear there is nothing like this under consideration. It
is an amendment that is not needed because it addresses a problem
that does not exist.”

Rep. Paul:

“as a physician,
having practiced medicine for well over 30 years, let me tell
Members, there is a crisis in this country. There is a crisis with
illegal drugs, but there is a crisis in this country with an overuse
of all drugs, especially in the area of psychiatry. Psychiatrists,
if they are honest with you, will tell you that diagnoses are very
subjective. It is not like diagnosing appendicitis. It is very, very
subjective. If you push on this type of testing, the more testing
you have, let me guarantee it, the more drugs you will have. Sure,
there are mental diseases. I am not excluding any of this when a
person has true mental illness, but I am talking about the overuse
of Ritalin and Prozac and many of these drugs that are pushed on
these kids.

“Let me tell
Members, there have been some real problems with families who will
not let their kids go on drugs because the schools pressure them to.
They have been charged with child abuse, and threatened with taking
their children away because they will not be put on these drugs.
That is the kind of abuse I am calling to Members’ attention, and
that is why you need to vote for this amendment. It does not change
anything. It does not deny anybody testing and treatment. All it
does is say universal testing of everybody of all ages in this
country is not the direction that we want to go. Please vote for my
amendment. ”

        “Medicating
Aliah“
(access code MJZL6Y) could have been cited here as just one example of
what children and parents face. The Paul amendment to HR 3010 would have
protected both children and adults from invasive screening that is based
on vague, subjective, and politically motivated criteria that will
result in labeling with dubious diagnoses. These diagnoses will

follow people for the rest of their lives and will result in drugging
with ineffective and potentially lethal medications. This vote was about
freedom of thought, as well as civil and parental rights. 

        Chelsea Rhodes is another example of a child who
was labeled with two different psychiatric disorders based on a
computerized mental health screening called TeenScreen, given in her
school without her parents knowledge or consent.  Her parents, with the
aid of the Rutherford Institute, are

suing the school district and the

mental health provider that did the screening.





        title=http://www.colescountyleader.com/columnists/columnistsview.asp?c=161342>We
can see where this is going when Harvard and the National Institutes of
Mental Health make the scientifically unsupportable claim that more than
50% of all Americans will be mentally ill during their lifetime. Even
psychiatric experts such as the former chairman of psychiatry at John
Hopkins found
that idea very difficult to swallow.  The

debate is raging within the psychiatric profession over the
boundaries between mental health and mental illness.  “Pretty soon,” Dr.
Paul McHugh said, “we’ll have a syndrome for short, fat Irish guys with
a Boston accent, and I’ll be mentally ill.”

        The FDA has held hearings on the use of
antidepressants and children. The FDA issued its strongest black box
warning after discovering that information on the lack of effectiveness
and dangerous side effects of these medications
was concealed from physicians and the public, sometimes for years.
Yet organized psychiatry is

trying to get those warnings removed, because they would rather
conceal the dangers to children than give up the profits.

        We need your involvement by informing Congress
that you expect them to protect the rights of parents and the health of
our children from overbearing government and mental health providers.
Especially over the July break, contact your Member of Congress. Support
HR 181. Please continue to

use our e-action
alert for HR 181 and pass it on to your networks of contacts.

Additional background information is also available there, as well
as on the

EdAction

website. Thank you.

Listen to the archived broadcast of a June 20th live radio interview
with Congressman Ron Paul, Dr. Karen Effrem, and Mr. Allen Jones [http://www.mindmattersradio.com/]
These three authorities on universal mental health legislation discuss
the ethical and scientific problems raised by screening children for
mental health. They discuss the New Freedom Commission report of 2003,
its influence on current federal legislation, and the role of the
pharmaceutical industry in plans to screen the U.S. population for
mental health.problems.

Order the Mental Health Screening Briefing Book

Your case for discussing these issues can be made stronger if you
purchase the Briefing Book now available from EdWatch that contains hard
copies of nine articles by Dr. Karen Effrem, Dr. Dennis Cuddy, Penny
Pullen of Illinois, and Karen Hayes of Illinois.  A CD-rom contains all
of those articles, plus a Power Point presentation with evidence to
bolster your case, and excerpts of a radio debate between Dr. Effrem and
a member of the New Freedom Commission. 

To order the “Universal Health Screening” Briefing Book

• from the
  
  EdWatch shopping cart.

• with credit card
  by telephone (952-361-4931), or

• by mail, send
  $20 with a request for the “Universal Health Screening” packet,
  check made to EdWatch. Send to: EdWatch, 105 Peavey Road, Suite 116,
  Chaska, MN, 55318

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