“No Mandatory Mental Health Screening For Children!” by Ron Paul

There has been a persistent lobbying effort, funded by pharmaceutical companies, to increase the number of these prescriptions to even more children. A universal screening program is the stated goal of these lobbyists. I would not be at all surprised to see the recent attention to the issue of schoolyard bullying used as a tool towards these ends.

Imagine the potential ramifications of a universal, mandatory psychiatric health screening program in a public school, considering how some bureaucrats are wont to behave! The diagnostic criteria for many mental illnesses remain vague and subjective. Therefore it is all too easy for a bureaucrat in a white coat to label a child with some sort of psychiatric syndrome simply because they were having a bad day, or behaving as a typical rambunctious child. That label could follow them around the rest of their school career and come with a number of prescriptions attached, which the state, as in the Godboldo case, may try to force the parents to administer, whether they want to or not.

Judge refuses criminal charges against Detroit mother in police stand off over forced drugging of daughter

A judge refused to reinstate criminal charges Monday against a mother who resisted police forcing their way into her home last March to take her teenage daughter during a dispute with a Child Protective Services worker over medications.

Wayne County Circuit Judge Gregory Bill ruled against claims by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office that 36th District Judge Ronald Giles committed judicial error in August when he threw out the charges against Maryanne Godboldo.

Bill said Giles was correct in concluding there was insufficient evidence presented by the prosecution to order Godboldo to trial on charges of illegally resisting and assaulting police for allegedly firing a shot at them.

“It is clear to me that he (Giles) doesn’t think the defendant shot at anybody,” Bill said, concluding that if a shot was fired inside the house, it was fired at the ceiling and perhaps not by the mother.

Ron Paul is right—Mental “screening” of school kids aims to Leave No Child Unmedicated

Congressman Ron Paul has noted the potential for universal or mandatory mental health screenings to be used for politically motivated purposes. One federally-funded violence prevention program already lists “intolerance” as a mental problem that may lead a child to commit violent acts at school, and there are efforts underway to add a diagnosis of “extreme intolerance” to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. “Because ‘intolerance’ is often a code word for believing in traditional values, children who share their parents’ values could be labeled as having mental problems and a risk of causing violence,” said Paul as he reintroduced his Parental Consent Act before the House of Representatives in August.

First introduced in 2005, Paul’s bill would forbid the use of federal funds to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health screening program. The bill also states that no federal education funds may be paid to any local education agency that uses the refusal of a parent or guardian to consent to mental health screening as a basis of child abuse or neglect.

More than 30,000 people have signed an online petition to stop using TeenScreen in schools. Parents and other concerned citizens should also tell their Members of Congress to support Paul’s bill. They should oppose mental health screening at the school board and state legislature levels, and ask state representatives to pass Pupil Rights legislation to keep students from being subjected to nosy psychological or psychiatric questions without prior, informed, written parental consent.