June 19, 2006

TeenScreen and Parental Consent

 
What TeenScreen Doesn't
 Want You to Know about
Parental Consent
 
By Mary Collins
 

Teen Screen, a program advertised as a "free" psychiatric "service" to prevent suicide, has caused an uprising all across the US. Citing the dangers of psychiatric drugs and important issues of parental rights, individuals and determined groups have spoken out against TeenScreen as a harmful factor in the attempts to care for the problems of children and teens.
 
TeenScreen's aim is to locate more children that can be identified as mentally ill and routed into “mental health” treatment. Many of these would be "treated" with psychiatric drugs, ignoring the fact that many of these very same drugs carry FDA-mandated Black Box warning labels because they are known to cause violence and suicide.
 
THE DANGER OF DRUGS
 
Internationally, more than 19 warnings have been issued on the dangers of psychiatric drugs since October 2004. The U.S. F.D.A., the European Medicines Agency Scientific Committee, the British Medical Journal, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Norwegian researchers, the Pediatric Advisory Committee, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, etc. have all contributed to the awareness campaign. Through scientific research, the destructive nature of psychiatric drugs has been brought to light.
 
At least eight of the last 13 U.S. school shootings were committed by teens taking prescribed psychiatric drugs known to cause violent and suicidal behavior. A prime example is Columbine High School, where 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 13 and wounded 23 others. Harris was taking an antidepressant drug known to cause violent behavior. Klebold’s family has never revealed whether he was also taking medication. Privacy laws prevent that information from being disclosed without their permission.
 
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The adverse effects of the drugs are known. It's unfortunate that the warnings had to come so late for many. Perhaps Eric Harris' parents would have made different decisions if they were given the full truth about the dangers of these drugs.
 
HOW TEENSCREEN WORKS
 
The biggest threat that TeenScreen poses may not be the drugs at all. How does it affect a young person to be told by an "authority" that he or she has a permanent, incurable brain disorder? After a child takes the TeenScreen survey, a mental health "professional" reviews his answers and speaks to the child. In this conversation, the "professional" can make disturbing statements to the child. He may tell the child, without any brain tests, that his brain is abnormal, that he has a permanent and potentially disabling disease, that he is "damaged goods". The child will then be sent on his way with the new "knowledge" that he is not a normal, healthy teenager as he thought in the morning but rather that he has a "mental disorder" that can ruin his life. The child hears this news alone, without parental involvement or knowledge. Often, the parents do not even know that their child was taking a test.
 
In a lawsuit filed in September 2005, Chelsea Rhodes of Indiana alleged that she took the TeenScreen test and was told that she had two mental disorders, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder. The lawsuit alleges that the examination itself and the ensuing diagnosis caused both Chelsea and her parents severe emotional harm. Chelsea's parents were not made aware of the test in advance and gave no permission for their daughter to participate.
 
TEENSCREEN PLAYING THE NUMBERS GAME ON PARENTAL CONSENT
 
Some TeenScreen sites use "passive consent", in which each and every parent is assumed to have consented, unless they specifically state otherwise in writing. This is done by sending a letter or printing a notice in a newsletter, informing parents of the upcoming TeenScreen, giving very little information about it, and providing a form for the parents to sign if they will not allow their child to be screened. Of course there is never any certainty that the parents actually see the letter or notice and it is also possible that the letter rejecting TeenScreen may be lost in transit back to the school. Leslie McGuire, TeenScreen’s Director, states: "Unless we hear from you that we can't screen your child we assume we have your permission and we're gonna’ screen them." For any parent that did not see the notice and did not know that their child would be participating in a TeenScreen test, this is clearly "no consent", not "Passive Consent". When parents find out, many are outraged by the violation of their rights.
 
TeenScreen's website states that all TeenScreen sites must obtain parental permission before offering screening to youth. Yet, passive consent, in which many parents will have no knowledge of the event and thus will not have given permission, is acceptable to TeenScreen. Passive consent is a way to increase the number of children that are screened. In response to the wave of protests from parents and organized groups, TeenScreen has changed the wording on their website several times to attempt to distance themselves from passive screening. At the time of this writing, the website claims that TeenScreen "strongly advises" the use of active parental consent but passive consent (which can mean “no consent”) is still in use.
 
The actual number of passive versus active sites is difficult to determine. Various percentages have been reported by TeenScreen, with numbers sometimes swinging wildly from one day to the next. In September 2005, The British Medical Journal published an article by freelance Journalist, Jeanne Lenzer, in which it was stated that 15 to 20% of TeenScreen sites use passive consent. According to Ms. Lenzer, Laurie Flynn, TeenScreen’s Executive Director, was asked to confirm the information. As of Monday September 26th, Ms. Flynn did not object to the number of 15-20%. Then on Tuesday September 27th, she wanted to change the number to 4%, quite a shift for one day. TeenScreen’s own website has been playing with the numbers as well. In September 2005, the website reported that 85% of sites used active consent, In October this was altered to 98.4%, then later to 98.2%. The next update was January 2006, when the percentage was removed altogether. Leslie MacGuire once reported that 25% of their sites use passive screening.
 
Evidently it’s quite a secret about how many students are taken into the TeenScreen program by way of passive consent. One thing that is known is that passive screening increases the number of children screened dramatically. In an email from a Florida school official, he stated that the use of passive screening could increase their participation rate from 50% to 95%. The Philadelphia Enquirer reported that in one school using active consent, only 4.2% of parents allowed their children to be screened.
 
With no reliable numbers available, one can only make guesses and calculations as to how many children are screened every year without their parents being informed. In a simple example, let's take 4 schools. One school (25%) uses passive consent and the other three schools (75%) use active consent. If each school has 1000 students, the single passive-consent school could screen as many as 950 children. All three of the active-consent schools combined could screen as few as 126 children (4.2%, as in the one school district reported by the Philadelphia Enquirer). And of the 950 screened using only passive consent, not one child will have a written consent from his or her parents.
 
THE FOUR LEVELS OF PARENTAL CONSENT
 
1. No consent
 
2. Passive consent
 
3. Active parental consent
 
4. Full informed consent
 
"No consent" is just what it sounds like, simply screening children with no parental consent at all. Supposedly, no TeenScreen sites operate on a “no-consent” basis but, in practice, many children are screened without the parent providing consent or even knowing about the screening. Without the parent's consent or prior knowledge, their children are asked introverting questions such as: "Has there been a time when nothing was fun to you and you just weren't interested in anything?", "Have you often felt nervous when you've had to do things in front of people?" or "Are you still thinking of killing yourself?"
 
Then, still without parental knowledge, the child is sent to a "clinician" who decides which label to use. It could be "Panic disorder", "Active suicide ideation" or "Social Phobia", all of which are simply lists of behaviors voted into existence as "mental disorders" by psychiatrists. The child is then told to seek help from "mental health" workers. No minister, priest, rabbi, medical doctor, nutritionist, allergist or any other alternative help is recommended to the child.
 
And finally, at the complete whim of the "mental health" practitioner, the child may be deemed a danger to himself and others and forcibly held in a psychiatric institution for up to 72 hours for observation. The first time the parent hears about the screening could be from a policeman calling to say that their 14-year-old is locked in the back seat, behind a metal grate and locked in by unbreakable glass on the way to involuntary commitment in the psych ward. Then of course the parent or insurance company will get the bill.
 
There is a law that is supposed to protect and help parents, the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA). This federal law states that prior, written parental consent must be obtained before a child can be given a survey, analysis or evaluation. "Passive consent" is an illegal, deceptive method used by Teen Screen to bypass the requirement for parental consent and increase the number of children screened.
 
“Active consent” describes those schools and school districts that require a written consent to be given prior to screening. This method may be preferable to “no consent” or “passive consent” but is still sorely lacking when it comes to protecting parental rights.
 
There are many troubles with TeenScreen’s “active consent”. One consideration is the matter of whether or not the parent actually saw or signed the consent. With TeenScreen sites offering free pizza coupons, movie tickets, or $50 mall gift certificates for returning consent slips, how many teens have arrived at school the day of the TeenScreen test without having the form signed and simply signed it themselves?
 
Even more important is the matter of what information is given to the parents. There are federal and state laws requiring “informed consent”, meaning that before someone agrees to participate in any medical procedure or experiment, they must be informed of and must understand the medical facts and the risks involved.
 
“Full informed consent” for TeenScreen would be a consent given only after having received and understood all the pertinent data involved.
 
This would include:
 
-The purpose of screening (TeenScreen sells their service as suicide prevention but no study has even shown a reduction in suicide or proven even one prevented suicide.)
 
-Who is performing the screening (The screening may be performed by employees or agents of a for-profit “mental health” treatment facility but this may not divulged to parents.)
 
-That the screening has an 84% rate of false-positives (meaning that as many as 84% of students can be falsely identified as “mentally ill”)
 
-The screening questions (TeenScreen will not reveal the questions to parents)
 
-The potentially bad effect of presenting suicide as something to be considered
 
-A full understanding of the basic foundation of psychiatry's "diagnoses", since there are no scientific tests that show whether a person has or does not have a mental disorder
 
-The fact that Psychiatry's "Diagnostic Statistical Manual" has over 300 behaviors that have just been voted on, according to whim, not tests or real facts
 
-The fact that the child may be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder with no objective medical testing, a label which can remain with that child for the rest of his life
 
-That some career paths may be closed to the child because of the diagnosis and/or psychiatric treatment
 
-That the parents may lose their parental rights or even be criminally charged with neglect if they refuse to accept the diagnosis and give the child psychiatric treatment
 
-A full understanding of the dangers and effects of the drugs that may be given to children for these "mental disorders" including deaths, violence and suicide
 
NO TeenScreen sites use full informed consent.
 
THE FOLLY OF TEEN "ASSENT"
 
According to the FAQ page on TeenScreen's web site, youth must provide written “assent” to participate in the TeenScreen program.
 
However, as stated in the Rhoades family’s lawsuit in Indiana, a teenager has no legal standing to make such a statement, “Any execution of the assent form by Chelsea was not knowing, effective, or valid consent to the administration of the TeenScreen test upon Chelsea because she did not have the legal capacity to consent and she was not aware of the purpose of the assent, the nature of the test to be given, or the purpose for which the test was being given.”
 
WHAT YOU CAN DO
 
Communicate.
 
Call your local school board or high school today. Find out if they have used or are even considering TeenScreen. If they are, make a formal, written request for records and find out if they are providing full informed consent in accordance with the law. Demand that your rights be protected. Write letters to the school and the school board, show up at meetings and speak up for parental rights, inform and organize your friends to do the same. Demand full informed consent, always. It is the only way to protect the rights of parents.
 
It is TeenScreen's responsibility to protect parental rights yet they are not doing it. The government makes laws to protect the public from having their rights trampled but so far laws have had little effect on TeenScreen's operation. Only a concerted, grass-roots effort can restore and protect parental rights. Your voice is needed. Now.
 


Mary Collins is a 72-year-old grandmother living in New Hampshire. She attained a BA in English Literature with a minor in History in 1954 from Millsap’s College in Jackson, Mississippi and was involved in education for over 20 years.  You may contact her at: marycollins_16_2 @ rushpost.com
 
 
 
 
Posted by EvansMediaUSA at 19:03:06 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

June 07, 2006

Ritalin -

  
 
 
Would You Give Your Child Cocaine?
 
by John Carey
 
 
While unfunded individuals and grass-roots groups are screaming at the top of their lungs about psychiatrists drugging our children based on made-up diseases, drug companies run hourly television ads to spread the false message of chemical imbalances. That no blood is ever drawn to prove this imbalance and that no normal child has Ritalin or Prozac coursing through their veins hasn't stopped this catch-phrase from becoming our version of the flat-earth concept widely accepted 400 years ago.
 
While teachers and psychiatrists are paired up to push drugs to "help" schoolchildren study, we also have TeenScreen partnering with psychiatrists coming in on the child suicide angle. Behind both groups are money-hungry billion dollar drug companies. It doesn't matter that TeenScreen identifies eighty-four non-suicidal teens for evaluation for every sixteen it correctly identifies (that's just more money for the psychiatric profession when they prescribe the drugs).
 
For today however, let's not even argue against this fabricated disease (Attention Deficit Disorder) or this sensationalistic worry about suicide (children are six times more likely to die in automobile accidents), but instead let's take a stroll through the KNOWN side-effects of one drug which psychiatrists happily prescribe to millions.
 
Ritalin, Vitamin R, the Smart Pill, Kiddie Cocaine – are all names for the pill that drug-company Novartis has made famous and is in the same category as cocaine, opium, and morphine. (NOTE : Other Schedule II stimulants used to treat ADD are Concerta and Adderall and their side-effects shows striking resemblance.)
 
Will Ritalin improve your child's grades? If Ritalin could do this, don't you think that Novartis would announce this to the world? The vast majority of children on Ritalin have either NO improvement or their actual achievement scores deteriorate. In The Learning Mystique, Gerald Coles confirms a 1978 review of seventeen studies and they all agree: "stimulant drugs have little, if any, impact on…long-term academic improvement." A large percentage of these children become robotic, lethargic or depressed.
 
What about fitting in to society? Studies prove that children on psychiatric stimulants for ADHD are 46% more likely to commit one felony, and 36% more likely to commit two or more felonies.
 
Does it make you kill? According to the American Psychiatric Association, SUICIDE is the major adverse reaction of Ritalin withdrawal. Suicides and attempted suicides only occur in three cases though: when stopping usage completely, when reducing the dosage or when continuing with the same dosage!
 
Besides suicides, the list of school shootings and family homicides by Ritalin and Prozac kids is staggering. We all know of people who do things while drunk that they don't do when sober, so why are we surprised when we give a child a daily dose of a Class II stimulant and he does something terrible?
 
How about impact on the body? Heart problems, blood disorders, brain damage, facial tics and death are just some of the side-effects too numerous to mention. From 1990-2000, 186 died from the use of these drugs, but because the FDA has a voluntary reporting scheme, it is estimated that this represents only 10-20% of the actual cases.
 
However, one side-effect stands out even more: "Ritalin can mutate the child by not allowing the child to grow to full size." Sociologists have traced everything from sexual selection of mates to job-hiring based on height; so how permanently disfiguring is this? The literature suggests giving your child holidays from Ritalin to counter this, but children's bodies and glands operate twenty-four hours a day, not just during holidays!
 
How about addiction? Novartis will claim that Ritalin isn't addictive. However, in a study of 5,000 children with ADHD who were followed from adolescence to adulthood, psycho-pharmacologist Susan Schenk of Texas A&M University concluded that children treated with Ritalin are three times more likely to develop a taste for cocaine. In British Columbia in the late 1980's, when heroin addicts shifted to Ritalin, the burglary rate increased 105% because while a heroin addict will inject two to three times a day, a Ritalin addict shoots up every two hours.
 
Are there any long-term mental effects? Medical researchers in the Psychology and Pharmacology fields, Travis Thompson, Ph.D., University of Minnesota and Klaus R. Unna, M.D., University of Illinois say: "Perhaps the best-known effect of chronic stimulant administration is psychosis. Psychosis has been associated with chronic use of several stimulants; e.g., amphetamines, Methylphenidate (RITALIN), phenmetrazine and cocaine."  (So the child patient of psychiatry is now manufactured into the adult patient of psychiatry!) There is also evidence that Ritalin can cause shrinkage or other permanent physical abnormalities in the brain.
 
Does this affect our society? How many future Beethovens, Thomas Jeffersons, Ernest Hemingways, Martin Luther Kings and Maya Angelous are we currently drugging into stupors in our schools and nation? Men and women of greatness are probably the least likely to sit still and do the normal schoolwork directed at the average student. How many non-drugged kids would have never become famous, but would have been able to hold a job at Wal-Mart, get married, have kids, go bowling, collect the next Beanie Babies, attend church, and enjoy life but are now doomed to become drug addicts, felons, and just plain psychotic?
 
We all want smart children, but this isn't Lake Woebegone. In any school half of our children will be below average! We can still brag on our child's size, their musical ability, their athletic prowess, or their ability to fix cars or computers. But not a single parent ever brags about their child being a drug-addict! Think about that before you allow your child anywhere near a psychiatrist.
 
After this short stroll down the long littered highway of Ritalin side-effects, just in case none of the above is enough to keep you from forcing a daily fix of a drug in the same class as cocaine down your child's throat, maybe this point of ironic justice will: In one group of Ritalin kids studied, thirty-four percent threatened to kill their parents.
 
Is there any greater threat to children, parents and society at large today than psychiatry, their false labeling and fraudulent treatments?
 
 
 
John Carey has degrees in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science from
Texas A&M, and has worked for a major oil company for over 20 years. As a
humanitarian endeavor, he has researched extensively on the psychiatric
drugging of children.
 
Posted by EvansMediaUSA at 03:46:38 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

June 06, 2006

Turn on the lights in Ohio and the cockroaches scatter

 
How They Stole Ohio
And the GOP 4-step Recipe to 'Blackwell' the USA in 2008
Abracadabra: Three million votes vanish
 
By Greg Palast


[Heads up! Catch Robert Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Greg Palast this next Saturday, June 10th, on Air America's 'Ring of Fire' on the shoplifting of the last election & and the next one.]

This is a fact: On November 2, 2004, in the State of Ohio, 239,127 votes for President of the United States were dumped, rejected, blocked, lost and left to rot uncounted.

And not just anyone's vote. Dive into the electoral dumpster and these "spoiled" votes have a very dark color indeed.
In another life, I taught statistics. And these statistics stank: the raw data tells us that if you are a Black voter, the chance of you losing your vote to technical errors in voting machinery is 900% higher than if you were a white voter.

Any guesses as to whom those African-Americans chose for president on those junked ballots? Check Ohio's racial demographics, do the numbers, and there it is: Kerry won Ohio. And that, too, is a fact. A fact that could not get reported in the USA.

But the shoplifting of those votes in Ohio was just the tip of the theft-berg. November 2, 2004 was a national ballot-box bonfire. In total, over three million votes (3,600,380 to be exact) were cast -- marked, punched, pulled -- YET NEVER COUNTED. I'm not talking about the Ukraine or Uganda. I'm talking about the United States of America "with liberty and justice for all."

Well, not "all." The nine-to-one Black-to-White ballot spoilage rate is a national statistic -- not just an Ohio trick. Last year, I flew to New Mexico to investigate the 33,981 cast but not counted ballots of that state in the 2004 race. George Bush "won" New Mexico by 5,988 votes. Or did he? I calculated that, of the all the ballots rejected and "spoiled," 89% were cast by voters of color. Who won New Mexico? Kerry won -- or he would have, if they had counted the ballots.

But they didn't count them. And that was deliberate. It's in the plan. It's the program. And the program for 2008 is simple. Two million ballots were cast but not counted in the 2000 race. (Over half, 54%, were cast by African-American.) In 2004, the GOP kicked it up to THREE million. Get ready, these guys aim high: "four in '06" and "five in '08" looks to be their game plan.
How will they pile up five million un-voters in 2008? Let's start with the three million "disappeared" of 2004:

Step 1: "Spoiling" ballots -- 1,389,231 of them. In the vote-count game, these are called "undervotes" and "overvotes." You can recognize these lost ballots by their hanging chads, punch cards without punches (an Ohio specialty), paper ballots eaten by scanners, and touch screens that didn't know you touched them.

Step 2: Rejecting "provisional ballots"-- 1,090,729 in this pile. Voters finding themselves at the "wrong" precinct, or wrongly "scrubbed" from voter rolls get these back-of-the-bus ballots first inaugurated in 2002. In '04, provisional ballots were passed out like candy to voters in the poorest precincts. They handed them out -- then threw them away -- one million dumped in all. In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell changed state rules, allowing him to toss out the ballots of legal voters who cast ballots in the wrong precinct although these citizens were told their vote would count after confirming their registration.

Step 3: Not counting absentee ballots -- 526,420 of them. At least, that's what we figure from official stats. But it's anyone's guess how many mailed-in votes were dumped. (However, in one case, in Palm Beach, Florida, Jeb Bush's candidate for Elections Supervisor, Theresa LaPore, counted more absentee votes than absentee ballots mailed in. Not the brightest bulb in the vote-fix biz, that Theresa.)

Step 4: Scrub'm, Purge'm, Block'm. These are the voters who never got to vote at all. This group includes those who found their registrations were never entered on the voter rolls. In Ohio, about one-fourth of those registered by Jesse Jackson's 2004 voter drive, found their registrations delayed beyond the election date or lost.

Add to this un-voter group, those who were wrongly "scrubbed" from registries as "felons." For example, there was Bernice Kines, purged in Florida in 2004 because she was convicted of a felony on July 31, 2009. I repeat: 2009. There was something especially odd about the Ohio felon purge: ex-cons are ALLOWED to vote in that state, Mr. Blackwell.

How many lost their chance to vote by scrubbing, purging and blocking? That's anyone's guess, but one million would not be an unfair estimate -- and that's not included in the 3.6 million tally of ballots uncounted.

Was it deliberate? Oh my God, yes. I'd like you to take a look at the "caging" lists the Republican National Committee concocted to challenge voters with "suspect" addresses. It included page after page of African-American soldiers, like one Randall Prausa, shipped overseas. Mission accomplished, Mr. President?

And there's some new tricks for these old dogs. For the 2006 and 2008, the GOP is pushing new Voter ID requirements. Your signature won't be good enough anymore.

What's wrong with the new ID laws? This: in the 2004 election, 300,000 voters were turned away from the polls for "wrong" ID. For example, in the "Little Texas" counties in New Mexico, if your voter registration included a middle initial but your driver's license had none, you were kicked out of the polling station. Funny, but they only seemed to ask Hispanic voters. We should see the number of voters rejected for ID to quintuple by 2008 based on the new "voting reform" laws recently passed in several states.

Also, coming to a polling station near you: more caging lists, scrub lists, ID challenge lists and more. Exactly why do you think they are compiling those "War on Terror" and War on Immigration databases? Behind the 2000 felon purge lists and behind the 2004 caging lists were databases from the same companies that now have those homeland security contracts. Are they saving us from Osama -- or from Democrats?

I wish I could give you a book on a page, because information is our weapon: Turn on the lights and the cockroaches scatter. That's why I'm asking you to read RFK's article on the Theft of Ohio -- and GET ANGRY. Then read, "Armed Madhouse: & The Scheme to Steal '08' -- AND GET READY.


**********
BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast is author of ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, The Scheme to Steal 'O8, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War -- out Tuesday. Or order it at www.ArmedMadhouse.com

Also, check Bradblog.com and AirAmericaRadio.com for the audio of Janeane Garofalo, Brad Friedman and Randi Rhodes reading "Kerry Won" and other sections of Armed Madhouse.

Then belly up to the beast: Join Greg Palast and the Reverend Jesse Jackson (in Chicago), Amy Goodman (in New York), Bob Fitrakis (in Columbus) and others for the 24-city US/UK Armed Madhouse Class War Boot Camp meetings. They begin this Monday, sponsored by Ohio Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, Operation PUSH, Oregon Voter Action, Activist San Diego and Pacifica Radio. For dates and locations, go to www.GregPalast.com
 
 
 
 
Posted by EvansMediaUSA at 11:56:08 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |