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Against the tide

Are schools responsible for science and suicide?

Posted by: Rhonda Robinson

Saturday, August 26, 2006 12:00 AM

Two lawsuits brought by angry parents against their local school districts could either lay foundations or roadblocks for the Governor's mental health screening plan for all Illinois children.

At issue is whether or not schools have the right, or responsibility, to monitor the mental health of students.

Hearings are scheduled in Topeka, Kansas in a case brought by a distraught mother who tragically lost two teen-age boys to suicide (in the same year no less). The mother has charged that the school should have or could have prevented the family's loss. Needless to say, school officials contend this was an unforeseeable event, of which, the school has no control or responsibility.

About this time last year, a family in Indiana brought suit against their daughter's school because they administered TeenScreen. TeenScreen is peddled around the country to schools as a suicide prevention tool. However, active parental consent was not (and often is not) obtained. The parents are charging that their daughter was "screened" then falsely diagnosed with two disorders without their permission.

If you're wondering why in the world schools are messing with our children's minds rather than instructing them, you might be surprised to find out it began in 2002, when a Pandora's Box was skillfully crafted by President Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.

The NFC states that our public schools are in "key position" to screen 52 million students and another 6 million adult school employees. Reasoning that the schools are in the position to identify mental health problems early and "provide a link to appropriate services."

Illinois raced to the forefront to be noted as the first state to implement the NFC recommendations with the Mental Health Act of 2003,which placed mental health in our State Learning Standards, and started the ball rolling for, mental health screening, not only of school children, but all children and pregnant women in Illinois.

Consider that in today's world of psychiatry, "appropriate services" translates into anti-depressants and polypharmacology (the art of mixing psychotropic drugs). And today's classroom, where one-in-four boys is on medication for ADHD, for which we know that at least one common medication prescribed to these children, Strattera, can induce suicidal thinking.

Is this a pattern or deadly cycle?

TeenScreen has been implemented in three known locations in Illinois.

These court cases have our parental rights and responsibilities hanging in the balance. Without King Solomon on the bench, our parental rights could easily be severed from our responsibilities and irrevocably divided with the school system.

Then how many children will survive the split?

Comments

Trolling for patients:

The choice "treatment" for children seen by a psychiatrist is in 9 out of 10 cases drugs. The same drugs the FDA has placed black-box warnings on. New information straight from a new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry reaffirms the FDA's black-box warning on prescribing anti-depressants to children.

In the study, researchers at Columbia University reviewed the medical records of 4,419 Medicaid patients who had been hospitalized for severe depression. According to the analysis, use of antidepressants including Wellbutrin, Effexor and SSRIs, such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft was significantly linked to suicide and suicide attempts in young patients. Children and teens, aged 6 to 18, who took antidepressants were 52% more likely to attempt suicide than their peers who werent taking medication. They were also 15 times more likely to succeed in their attempts.

Doesn't this violate the Hippocratic oath - "first do no harm".

Keep Teenscreen out of our schools.

Dominique Beck

Posted by DominiqueBeck on August 28, 2006 at 11:51 AM