Legislation or Entities Affected:

• President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health
  
• State Incentive Transformation Grants within HHS appropriations bill
  
• Foundations for Learning Act within No Child Left Behind, section 5542 (USC 20, sec.7269a).
  

Recommendation
Eliminate all funding and grants for:

Eliminate funding for the following reasons:

1) Screening does not prevent suicide - The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issued its findings and recommendation against screening for suicide that corroborate those of the Canadian PSTF.  "USPSTF found no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality. There is limited evidence on the accuracy of screening tools to identify suicide risk in the primary care setting, including tools to identify those at high risk. (See http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/05/21.html)

2) Mental health diagnoses are “subjective” and “social constructions” as admitted by the authors of the diagnostic manuals themselves.  Both the World Health Organization and the Surgeon General reports say that it is especially difficult to accurately diagnose young children because they are so rapidly changing and developing.  This is particularly relevant to our opposition to the Foundations for Learning Act within No Child Left Behind, section 5542 (USC 20, sec.7269a).

3) Parents are already being coerced to put their children on psychiatric medications and some children are dying because of it. Universal screening and the accompanying treatments recommended by the New Freedom Commission will only increase that problem. Across the country, Patricia Weathers, the Carroll Family, the Johnston Family, and the Salazar Family were all charged or threatened with child abuse charges for refusing or taking their children off of psychiatric medications. Both Matthew Smith and Shaina Dunkle died of medication toxicity after their parents were coerced to place their children on drugs by the schools. What are the rights of youth and their parents to refuse or opt out of this screening?  Will they face coercion and threats of removal from school or child abuse/neglect charges if they refuse? How reliable are the screening instruments?  What if the diagnosis is wrong? How will a child or adolescent remove a stigmatizing label from their records that could follow them the rest of their lives? Will parents be honestly told about the potentially severe side effects of the medications used in treatment? There are no studies on the long-term effects of any of these drugs on the brains of children, especially in the 2 to 4 year old children that are increasingly being put on these drugs and more is being spent on them than on antibiotics. (http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/05/25.html)

4) Most psychiatric medications do not work in children – Medical textbooks, published and unpublished research, and government reports consistently state that the long term safety and effectiveness of antidepressants like Prozac and stimulants like Ritalin have yet to be proven.

5) The side effects of these medications in children are severe – They include suicide and violence from the new antidepressants; cardiac (heart) toxicity from the older antidepressants; growth suppression, psychosis, and violence from stimulants; and diabetes from the newer anti-psychotic medications.  Several school shooters, like Eric Harris (Columbine), Kip Kinkel (Oregon), and Jason Hoffman (San Diego) were on antidepressants or stimulants or both at the time of their crimes.

(For detailed references for points 2-5, see http://www.edaction.org/2003/030827.htm)

6) Merging screening with the academic standards required by No Child Left Behind, as is happening in Illinois, will lead to diagnosis for political reasons. A school violence prevention program funded by the federal government called "Early Warning, Timely Response" lists “intolerance for others and prejudicial attitudes” as an early warning sign for violence and mental instability, saying, “All children have likes and dislikes. However, an intense prejudice toward others based on racial, ethnic, religious, language, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and physical appearance ­ when coupled with other factors may lead to violent assaults against those who are perceived to be different.” (See http://edaction.org/2004/080204.htm) The Phoenix office of the FBI put out a pamphlet for their joint counterterrorism operations that said that people who are “defenders of the US Constitution against federal government and the UN” and “make numerous references to the US Constitution” should be monitored as potential murderous and fanatical terrorists, by extension, considered mentally unstable. http://www.keepandbeararms.com/newsarchives/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=2126)

7) Physicians and the public are rapidly losing confidence in the validity of scientific research because the FDA has allowed the pharmaceutical industry to withhold data not favorable to their products. (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/9401899.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp; http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/08/13.html; http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58130-2004Jan28?language=printer); The FDA also suppressed the testimony of its medical officer Dr. Andrew Mosholder at a February hearing when he found that children on the newer antidepressants were nearly twice as likely as have suicidal ideation or commit suicide than children on placebo.  After paying for another study at taxpayer expense, Dr. Mosholder’s findings were confirmed. (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/science/20depress.html) It is now nearly a year since Britain banned the use of all of the SSRI antidepressants in children except Prozac, and all that the FDA has done is issue a caution to monitor people on these drugs more closely. If data is withheld about the dangers or lack of effectiveness of the new psychiatric drugs, why should physicians believe and carry out the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission for treatment, such as the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) that uses those drugs as paid for the state incentive grants?

8) The untoward influence by the pharmaceutical industry, or at least the appearance of impropriety, is abundantly clear in two important aspects of this issue.   First, “…Dr. Peter J Weiden, who was a member of the project's [TMAP] expert consensus panel, charges that the guidelines are based on ‘opinions, not data’ and that bias due to funding sources undermines the credibility of the guidelines since ‘most of the guideline's authors have received support from the pharmaceutical industry.’ (http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/bmj;328/7449/1153) In addition, just when the US House was to investigate the drug company role in suppressing negative data and the FDA’s handling of the Mosholder report, the chairman of the subcommittee, James Greenwood (R-PA) abruptly “postponed” the hearing, decided he would not seek re-election, and went to work with a lobbying organization that works for the very companies he was to investigate. ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A106-2004Jul20?language=printer) The recommendations of the New Freedom Commission should not be carried out and paid for with tax dollars in the state incentive transformation grants until the level of drug company corruption of FDA policies and Congress is thoroughly investigated.