Paying to Drug Kids

Sadly, here is another case where the rhetoric of
government officials and agencies bears no resemblance to reality and the
truth.  This time it involves our children being labeled mentally ill in
infancy by vague and politically motivated criteria and becoming lifelong
dependents on ineffective and dangerous medications. The cost of these
deceptions to our children, our freedoms of conscience and religion, our
parental authority, and our treasure will be incalculable.

During the October 17th, 2005
meeting with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administrator
(SAMHSA) administrator Charles Curie, Mr. Curie made some significant
statements. The statements were made to EdWatch, AHRP, and other members of the
coalition of national groups opposing universal mental health screening and
psychiatric drugging that are recommended in the New Freedom Commission (NFC)
report. The recommendations are being implemented and funded by the federal
government, state laws, and private and government grants.

Curie
admitted the lack of scientific validity of the Texas Medication Algorithm
Project (TMAP) psychiatric drug program. He also stated that TeenScreen is no
longer a model program. The facts are, however, that both TMAP and TeenScreen are
still present and/or receiving federal funding. His other statements in the
October meeting included:

• “The New Freedom Commission report is not official Bush Administration
  policy, but rather the unofficial recommendations of an appointed
  commission.” 
  
• The state incentive transformation grants (SITG), funded at $26 million in
  the FY 2006 appropriations bill, are merely for infrastructure for states to
  set up their individual transformation plans for a “recovery oriented system.”

• The Federal Mental Health Action Agenda (FMHAA or “Action Agenda”) is “not
  really a blueprint or road map for implementing the NFC report.”

It
took only a cursory review of the Action Agenda and other SAMHSA documents to
see that none of these statements is true:

• The NFC recommendations are clearly administration policy.
  SAMHSA admits in the very first paragraph of the Action
  Agenda that the five principles “around which the New Freedom Commission
  on Mental Health framed its work… embody the vision of transformation that
  will guide the challenging but necessary work that lies ahead.”

The
NFC report is the very foundation of the federal Action Agenda. This Agenda
involves at least 13 different offices and agencies within the Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) and at least five different cabinet level
departments. It includes the Department of Education, where many ineffective and
dangerous federal mental health programs, like Foundations for Learning for 0-7
year olds (see Dr. Effrem’s
description of this program) and the politically correct “Early Warning,
Timely Response” (see the quote
regarding “intolerance” from the Department of Education’s website for this
program) are already rampant from preschool to high school. 

• State Incentive Grants are implementing the NFC
  recommendation. Despite Mr. Curie’s assurances to us and to Congress,
  and despite protestations by
  Representatives Ralph Regula (R-OH), Tim Murphy
  (D-PA) and Grace
  Napolitano (D-CA) that the State Incentive Grants (funded by Congress at
  $26 million for FY 2006) are merely for planning, they are being used to
  implement the NFC recommendation. These involve “early” universal mental
  health screening “across the life span,” including preschoolers and 52 million
  public school children, as well as the push for infant mental health screening
  in the Action
  Agenda. These also include “referral to treatment” involving government
  psychiatric drug programs like the NFC model program, TMAP. The 2004 SAMHSA Matrix brochure says,
  “SAMHSA is investing more than $517 million in transformation efforts,
  including $47 million to fund the State Incentive Grants for Transformation
  program to enable States to begin implementing the Commission’s findings.”
  [Emphasis added.]

The Action Agenda is the means to implement the NFC
recommendations.  Both the Action Agenda itself and several other
SAMHSA documents contain statements such as, “CMHS [Center for Mental Health
Services within SAMHSA] has contracted with a number of national mental health
organizations to provide technical assistance to States in the development of
activities and plans to implement
the New Freedom Commission recommendations.” [Emphasis added.]

Not only is there an enormous discrepancy between Mr. Curie’s
statements and the facts, but the agency also admits in the Action Agenda and
accompanying documents that it is using our tax dollars to recruit
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to implement the NFC recommendations:

• The Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) within SAMHSA, as part of the
  technical assistance program mentioned above, has used taxpayer funds to
  contract with “the National Association of State Mental Health Program
  Directors (NASMHPD) to coordinate this project and to collaborate with six
  subcontractors: the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the
  Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, the National Alliance for
  the Mentally Ill (NAMI), the National Association of Mental Health Planning
  and Advisory Councils (NAMHPAC), the National Council for Community Behavioral
  Healthcare (NCCBH), and the National Mental Health Association (NMHA) to “deliver written analysis or
  on-site training and technical assistance on a range of policy issues related
  to the implementation of the recommendations of the President’s New Freedom
  Commission on Mental Health.” {Emphasis added.]

Forty-five
states have received technical assistance from these groups via SAMHSA.
Parents in the state of Missouri even received training in how
to lobby for more taxpayer funds to pay for these ineffective and dangerous
programs.  Every one of the organizations listed above has a vested
financial, power, or professional interest in expanding the mental health system
and has been a wholesale, uncritical supporter of the screening and medication
recommendations in the NFC report. These groups completely ignore contradictory
scientific and medical evidence. The State Mental Health Program Directors and
NAMI have received millions of dollars in grants from the pharmaceutical
industry. 
 
NFC chairman Michael Hogan
is the director of the Ohio Mental Health Department, which was one of the first
to adopt TMAP (Texas Medication Algorithm Project). He is one of its most
aggressive promoters, and he has traveled across the country – all expenses
picked up by drug manufacturers. Hogan also served on an
“Advisory Committee” of Janssen Pharmacia, manufacturer of the antipsychotic
Risperdal (risperidone) a TMAP-recommended first line treatment. Thanks to Hogan
and the other state mental health program directors, TMAP
has spread to at least a dozen states and is affecting thousands of children, as
young as age three, in juvenile justice, foster care [1] and welfare
programs.  The cost of these psychiatric drugs is bankrupting state
Medicaid programs. Besides being exorbitantly expensive, the drugs are
ineffective. Every large study not funded by the pharmaceutical industry has
demonstrated this. The FDA has issued stringent black box warnings, as well, for
fatal side effects of these drugs in some group of people.[2]

 
These points and more were discussed in a follow-up letter from
the national coalition of concerned groups to SAMHSA on December 12,
2005.  Mr.
Curie’s reply to that letter did not address a single one of these
concerns.
 
It appears that SAMHSA was not really interested in
answering the concerns of EdWatch, and others about these invalid and dangerous
programs.  It also appears that interests of the pharmaceutical industry
and psychiatric establishment are more important to their lapdogs in Congress
and the bureaucracy than are the rights of parents, children and citizens.


The Abramoff scandal pales in comparison to the stench of the mental
health establishment’s influence over so many areas of the federal government
and, in turn, so many areas of state governments. Their influence causes our
children to be labeled in infancy, and it creates a never-ending market for
psychiatric drugs. The long term effects of these drugs on the brains of our
children are unknown. They also create a market for other drugs used to treat
the chronic side effects like obesity and diabetes, and they will be needed
throughout the lives of those affected, enhancing drug company profits while
bankrupting taxpayer funded programs. As these programs multiply, the use of
politically motivated labeling and drugging for children who do not comply with
the indoctrination of the federal curriculum will increase. Brave New World will
appear less and less like fiction unless these programs are stopped.

 
What will you do to stop it?  Stay tuned for more of this
story and for what you can do.

Karen R. Effrem, M.D., is a pediatrician and policy analyst. She serves on the Board of Directors of four national organizations: EdWatch, the Alliance for Human Research Protection, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the National Physicians Center. The article first appeared in an e-letter “Issues and Action in Education” distributed by EdWatch.org.