Parental Consent Act of 2007
Aug 30th, 2007 by Brian A. Thomas
There is a very important bill before Congress that I urge you to tell your Representative to get behind right now. The Parental Consent Act of 2007, would explicitly "prohibit the use of Federal funds for any universal or mandatory mental health screening program."
The bill is in response to TeenScreen, which until recently was screening kids for mental health issues with a short (generally 10 minute) test, to see if a kid is suicidal. If the test decided they were at risk, they would be referred to further evaluation where if the parent refused or refused to allow them to be drugged, they would be threatened with child abuse violations. The program is overseen by advisers to the drug companies and is an obvious ploy to medicate more kids and sell more drugs. Recall that the drug companies, on a per dollar basis, makes more than twice what even the oil companies make, only banks make more. Until recently the program would test kids with passive consent, that is they tested every child, unless specifically told by the parent or guardian they were not allowed, of course what the parent doesn't know... Recently it was changed so that specific consent was required, at least in most public schools. However we need a law to prevent them from rolling it back or other such laws coming forward. The false positive rate of TeenScreen is 84%, meaning there are 84 false positives for every 16 real hits, this is worse then the drug screen rate (which is far higher then the industry will publicly admit, but what do they care if millions of lives are ruined by false positives meaning those people can't get jobs, it means even more money for them, and the government doesn't care as it means those people can't work putting them on government rolls and dependent on the government). Can we take serious any test that has an 84% false positive rate? So we put these kids on antidepressants who are not depressed and suicidal, the side effect of such drugs is suicidal thoughts according to the FDA... Where is the logic of this? Kids who took their own lives are 15 times more likely to have been on antidepressants, which even after you filter out those who were already likely to commit suicide is a very high number. I have to actually ask what is the point of an antidepressant if it increases suicidal thoughts according to the FDA? How does such a drug pass FDA standards?
How would you answer a question about if you ever feel nervous doing things in front of a large group of people? If you say yes, sorry you are neurotic, and need mental health help and drugged. According to TeenScreen anyhow. TeenScreen's response is that the test is voluntary, which kind of side-steps the issue.
Oh, and we know how nice kids are to other kids. We know a kid falsely, or even positively labeled as mentally ill won't get made fun of...
Anyhow, back to the bill. The bill specifically makes it a requirement that these screenings require specific consent of the parent. The best part is section 2 (b), which removes the threat of child abuse for refusing to allow your child to be screened. So now you have to specifically consent and don't have to worry about being charged with child abuse if you refuse.
Again, urge your Representative to support H.R. 2387, the Parental Consent Act of 2007.
A video about TeenScreen.
