Brave New Schools

Psychiatric Screening

in America

August 29, 2005

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In 2003 the President’s New Freedom Commission (NFC) on Mental Health presented its final report to the President – a report that called for a “fundamental transformation” of America’s mental health system.  Among the many NFC recommendations was the “routine and comprehensive” screening of America’s children in public schools.  Washington State (along with several other states) has now applied for a federal grant to implement the NFC’s recommendations, including school screening.

The proposed psychiatric testing of America’s children comes at a time when the psychiatric drugging of children is skyrocketing, more than doubling every 5 – 7 years.  It comes at a time when the FDA is issuing monthly warnings on the adverse effects of the stimulants and antidepressants that are being prescribed to teens and toddlers at unprecedented rates.  It comes at a time when school shootings, perpetrated by teens who have themselves been taking psychiatric drugs, are becoming a fact of life in America.

The consequences of psychiatric screening for families are enormous and they have already begun to occur.  Attorneys for an Indiana family recently filed a tort claim notice after the couple’s daughter was subjected to a mental health examination at school without her parents’ knowledge or explicit consent.  The parents found out about the screening when their daughter informed them she had been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder.¹

The idea that children in trouble can’t be helped without first sending them to be psychiatrically diagnosed is becoming increasingly pervasive.  Mention “depression” to most Americans and the first thought that will enter their minds is “mental illness.”  Such viewpoints represent a significant shift in our nation’s perception of human experience whereby behavior is now a disease. They are the result of years of marketing and educational campaigns by the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry and those campaigns are now culminating in the transformation of schools into mental health clinics, with the resultant decline in learning standards and student achievement.

In this report we will highlight some of the issues involved in screening and trace the recent history of psychiatry’s ever growing presence in America’s schools and what it means for America’s children.  The future of our children, and hence, our nation, is at stake.  Most, if not all, of society’s current problems can be traced to the influence of psychiatric ideology on education, religion*, law, medicine and culture.  We dare not allow the psychiatric industry to continue its takeover of our educational system. We hope this report will provide you with the necessary information to begin fighting the movement for universal mental health screening.

*  In a June 7, 2005 story in the Washington Post, Thomas Insel, the Director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, bemoaned the fact that individuals who are depressed or anxious seek spiritual help. “’You wouldn’t rely on your priest for treatment if you had breast cancer,’ Insel said.  ‘Why would you go to your priest for major depressive disorder?’” (Rick Weiss, “Study: U.S. Leads in Mental Illness, Lags in Treatment,” Washington Post, June 7, 2005) Thus psychiatry places a wedge between priests and parishioners.

The New Freedom Commission Pushes Psychiatric Screening

On July 22, 2003 the President’s New Freedom Commission (NFC) on Mental Health submitted its final report on our nation’s mental health system to President Bush.  The report, Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America, identified “six goals as the foundation for transforming mental health care in America.” ²

One of those goals was “the early detection of mental health problems in children and adults – through routine and comprehensive testing and screening….” ³ The NFC left no doubt about the role schools are to play in this transformed mental health system:

Schools are in a key position to identify mental health problems early and to provide a link to appropriate services. ⁴

… schools must be partners in the mental health care of our children.⁵

… school mental health programs must provide any screening or treatment services….⁶

According to the Commission “… it is critical to strengthen mental health programs in schools.” ⁷ Interventions are to begin “at the first sign of difficulties.” ⁸ 

The language of the NFC report has led to widespread concern about the government’s intent to institute psychiatric testing of all children in schools.  This has been denied by NFC Chairman Michael Hogan.  At the website of TeenScreen, a Columbia University screening program recommended by the NFC, Hogan is quoted as stating, “The commission did NOT call for mandatory universal mental health screening for all children. I am at a loss to explain why this misrepresentation persists, since it is at odds with the plain language of our report to the President.” ⁹

However, the “plain language” of the report – e.g., “routine and comprehensive testing and screening” – certainly suggests a massive intervention in our schools.  Moreover, in a January 20, 2005 story in the Christian Science Monitor, Hogan said that the Commission decided that recommending universal screening would be "a little premature and probably controversial even though we thought in the long run, it probably might be the right thing to do.” ¹⁰

It would appear then that universal screening is the intent of the NFC.  The dilemma for the NFC is how to implement that intent so that “in the long run” universal screening comes to be accepted and less controversial.

The answer to that question is contained in another goal of the NFC:  “National education initiatives will shatter the misconceptions about mental illnesses, thus helping more Americans understand the facts and making them more willing to seek help for mental health problems.”¹¹

The NFC advocates “actions of reducing stigma, increasing awareness, and encouraging treatment….”¹²   But if fact, the so-called “stigma of mental illness” derives from psychiatric labeling and psychiatry’s message, “Your brain is defective.  Your thinking and your emotions are abnormal.”  It is psychiatry that invents diseases and thereby shrinks the boundary of normalcy so that more and more people come to be seen as sick and the stigma of mental illness grows.  “Reducing stigma” and “increasing awareness” are code for gaining public acceptance of psychiatric labeling.  The goal is not a reduction of the stigma of mental illness.  It is the expansion and acceptance of the stigmatization of individuals with psychiatric labels, with the ultimate goal being more Americans in “treatment,” i.e., taking psychiatric drugs.

In Illinois, one of the first states to move toward screening in schools, the NFC blueprint for universal screening has already been drafted.  The Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership (ICMHP) has now submitted a plan to the governor that calls for “a comprehensive, multi-faceted public awareness campaign to reduce the stigma of mental illness and educate families, the general public, and other key audiences about the benefits of children’s social and emotional development and how to access services.” ¹³

The Illinois plan was the result of a state law known as the Children’s Mental Health Act of 2003.  The act called for “incorporating social and emotional development into school learning standards and educational programs” and states, “The Illinois State Board of Education shall develop and implement a plan to incorporate social and emotional development standards as part of the Illinois Learning Standards for the purpose of enhancing and measuring children’s readiness and ability to achieve academic success.” ¹⁴

The ICMHP is calling for “A comprehensive and coordinated children’s mental health system” that “starts early, beginning prenatally and at birth, and continues throughout adolescence.” ¹⁵

Washington State’s Plan for School Screening

On June 1, 2005, Washington State submitted a grant proposal to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) “to transform existing mental health systems of care consistent with the goals of the President’s New Freedom Commission Report on Mental Health.” ¹⁶ According to the grant proposal, Governor Christine Gregoire is “leading” a program, “Partnerships for Recovery,” to transform Washington’s mental health system “to achieve the goals of the President’s New Freedom Commission for all people in the State of Washington.” ¹⁷

Washington’s grant proposal has adopted all of the NFC goals, including “early mental health screening, assessment and referral to services” ¹⁸ and  “[I]ncreased mental health presence in schools….”¹⁹

In Washington screening will begin with the poor.  Washington’s grant proposal states, “Partnerships for Recovery will mandate behavioral health screening as a required part of Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT) exams.” ²⁰ EPSDT is a Medicaid program for children (under 21 years old).

To indoctrinate the rest of the population to accept universal screening, Washington is following the model proposed by the NFC and adopted by Illinois.  This includes a “Community and Family Social Marketing Initiative” to “reduce the stigma of mental illness,” “[P]romote understanding of the early signs and symptoms of mental illness,” and “[E]ncourage individuals to seek treatment ….” ²¹ At the same time a “Business and Employer Social Marketing Initiative” which will accomplish similar goals in the workplace, including State government. ²²

“Partnerships for Recovery will target public education to parents of young children,” ²³ and “educate parents and family members in identification of and treatment resources for emotional and behavioral problems in their children.” ²⁴

Washington’s campaign will market the psychiatric/pharmaceutical vision of the human condition in a manner intended to convince the public that screening is safe and the right thing to do.  Phrases like “recovery orientation,” and “consumer-driven” are serve this purpose and are objectionable only to the few who realize that the mental health field has redefined recovery to mean doing the best one can despite not recovering ²⁵ and that it is the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry that is driving universal screening.

The Seeds of Screening

The roots of the NFC screening proposal trace back to Texas in the mid 1990’s when President Bush was the governor.   According to a report in the May/June2005 issue of Mother Jones magazine, the main characters were state officials in the Texas mental health and corrections systems, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, a major research center that conducts drug trials for pharmaceutical companies, and the drug companies themselves, which provided significant funding.   Pharmaceutical company gifts to the Texas Department of State Health Services totaled $1.3 million from 1997 to 2004, with at least $834,000 earmarked for TMAP.²⁶

Together they developed TMAP, the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, which Texas adopted in 1997.  TMAP called for the newest, most expensive psychiatric drugs to be used in the treatment of mental disorders.  One result: 19,404 Texas teenagers were prescribed an antipsychotic in July or August of 2004.  98% received the newer atypical antipsychotics. ²⁷

(A meta-analysis of 52 clinical trials involving over 12,000 patients published in 2000 in the British Medical Journal, found “no clear evidence that atypical antipsychotics are more effective or better tolerated than conventional antipsychotics.” ²⁸) 

Other States Adopt TMAP

Backed by drug industry funding, TMAP was then exported to other states.  The principal vehicle for exporting TMAP was the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD).  Indeed, in many states, links with the NASMHPD, the adoption of TMAP guidelines, and the unchecked psychiatric drugging of children form a disturbing pattern.

One of the key players in the development of TMAP in Texas was Dr. Steven Shon, the medical director for behavioral health of the Texas Department of State Health Services.²⁹

In April of 2004, the Texas Comptroller, Carole Strayhorn, released a report, Forgotten Children, which discussed the psychiatric drugging of foster children in Texas.  Among the findings: The Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services “exercises little meaningful oversight” over psychiatric medications and “Many observers, including physicians, children’s advocates and foster parents, have expressed concern over the types and amounts of psychotropic medications prescribed to foster children.”³⁰

One parent complained, “Our foster sons were completely misdiagnosed in foster care and unnecessarily medicated. Kids are medicated for higher-level ratings (more money for agency & parent) instead of assisting foster parents in making these kids good citizens.³¹

Strayhorn’s report stated, “A leading child psychiatrist has expressed concern regarding children receiving multiple medications of the same class, such as two stimulants or antidepressants.”³²

According to Allen Jones, a former investigator with the Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General who has blown the whistle on drug company influence in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Director attended multi-day “Advisory Board Meetings” in Tampa, Seattle and Chicago – sponsored by Janssen Pharmaceutica (makers of the atypical antipsychotic Risperdal) when TMAP being developed (as PENNMAP) in Pennsylvania.³³  PENNMAP was fully implemented in 2003.

In Pennsylvania, another whistleblower, Dr. Stephan Kruszewski, a Harvard trained psychiatrist working for the state’s Department of Public Welfare, complained that children were being heavily drugged with antipsychotics and anticonvulsants (mainly Neurontin).³⁴  He was fired.

(Last May Pfizer’s Warner-Lambert division pled guilty to illegally marketing Neurontin for unapproved treatments.  Pfizer paid $430 million to settle charges that included defrauding Medicaid. ³⁵⁾

Stephen Mayberg was the California State Mental Health Program Director when California implemented TMAP. Mayberg is a past president of NAMHPD and the NASMHPD research institute.³⁶ In 1998 the Los Angeles Times reported that,

Children under state protection in California group and foster homes are being drugged with potent, dangerous psychiatric medications, at times just to keep them obedient and docile for their overburdened caretakers A review of hundreds of confidential court files and. prescription records, observations at group homes as well as interviews with judges, attorneys, child welfare workers and doctors across the state, revealed that youngsters are being drugged in combinations and dosages that experts in psychiatric medication say are risky -- and can cause irreversible harm.³⁷

The Chairman of the NFC, Michael Hogan, was the Mental Health Program Director in Ohio when TMAP was implemented there.³⁸ A 2004 Janssen (makers of the atypical antispsychotic, Risperdal) publication, “Mental Health Issues Today,” lists Hogan as a member of the Advisory Board.³⁹ Last year Eli Lilly (makers of the atypical antipsychotic, Zyprexa) gave Hogan its Lifetime Achievement Award.⁴⁰

Ohio’s version of TMAP, OMAP, was adopted in 1999.⁴¹  According to Decision Support Services, Inc., (DSS) a company that does research and consulting activities for the Ohio Department of Mental Health, OMAP “was developed through the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.” ⁴²

On April 24 and 25, the Columbus Dispatch ran a two-part story on children under state care titled, “Drugged Into Submission.”  In part one, “Forced Medication Straitjackets Kids,” the Dispatch reported, “… a three-month investigation of thousands of state inspection records as well as more than 80 interviews with child-welfare workers, doctors, families, lawyers and industry officials reveal growing concerns that pills and injections, most of them untested on youths, have become a quick fix to stifle troublemakers.”  In part two, the Dispatch stated, “Doctors prescribed sedatives and powerful, mood-altering medications for nearly 700 Ohio babies and toddlers on Medicaid last summer, according to a Dispatch review of records.”⁴³

The influence of drug company marketing efforts like TMAP has already been felt in Washington state.  In Washington, atypical antipsychotics rank 1, 3, and 5 on the Medical Assistance Administration’s list of top 100 drugs by money paid, with nearly $78 million spent on those three drugs (Zyprexa ($36 million), Risperdal ($21 million), Seroquel ($20.8 million) in fiscal year 2004. Neurontin is #4, at $20.8 million. ⁴⁴  In 1997 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a four-part series on the psychiatric drugging.  One headline charged,  “Unmonitored stream of mood drugs imperils children entrusted to state.”⁴⁵

NAMI Washington is involved in pushing TMAP according to their legislative briefing paper “NAMI Washington and the 2002 State Legislature (March/April 2002)”

“… we hope to encourage the legislature to devise a program similar to that jointly developed in Texas several years ago by NAMI Texas and their state Mental Health Division. That cost effective and treatment effective methodology is called the Texas Medication Algorithm Program (TMAP). Reportedly, it works well for all concerned. It is essentially based on the premise that if doctors and patients remain free to employ the medications that work best for them and if the state operates an ongoing feedback loop of information on what medications do work best for which symptoms and diagnoses, everyone will want to choose those medications that are most likely to be most effective. In the end, cost effective treatment is not getting people to take the cheapest pills, but getting them the most effective medications early in their illness.”

Behind the NAMI involvement we find drug company funding, according to the New York Times of Feb 1, 2004, Making Drugs, Shaping the Rules:

“In 2002, Janssen gave the Olympia, Wash., chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill a grant of $15,000 to fly Dr. Shon and other Texans to speak to Washington state legislators about the guidelines, according to Bill Pilkey, the chapter's [NAMI Washington] former treasurer. Each speaker, he said, was paid $1,500.”

Once the drug companies had convinced states to purchase their most expensive drugs, they just needed to create customers.  Enter the President’s New Freedom Commission.  According to whistleblower Allan Jones, 14 of the 22 NFC Commissioners had ties to TMAP, “directly or by close association.”⁴⁶

The NFC proposed screening “across the lifespan” ⁴⁷ and, of course, TMAP. ⁴⁸ All that remained was to export the NFC’s vision across the United States.  The SAMHSA grants serve just that purpose.  The SAMHSA website states, “SAMHSA, and its Center for Mental Health Services, have been charged with the responsibility to implement the goals and recommendations of the New Freedom Commission.” ⁴⁹

Is Mental Health Screening Necessary?

Do we need to screen children to help them?  It sounds good.  We frequently screen children for other diseases.   The key word here, however, is disease.   

The psychiatric industry’s decades-long marketing of the idea that mental and emotional problems are illnesses does not make them illnesses any more than the Inquisition’s centuries of claims that certain behaviors were the result of witchcraft made that true.   Surgeon General David Satcher's 1999 report, "Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General," states, "Few lesions or physiologic abnormalities define the mental disorders, and for the most part their causes remain unknown."⁵⁰   

In his 1998 book, Blaming the Brain, Dr. Elliot Valenstein, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, wrote, "Contrary to what is claimed, no biochemical, anatomical, or functional signs have been found to reliably distinguish the brains of mental patients." ⁵¹

According to Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen, “We do not yet have proof either of the cause or the physiology for any psychiatric diagnosis.  ...  In recent decades, we have had no shortage of alleged biochemical imbalances for psychiatric conditions.  Diligent though these attempts have been, not one has been proven.” ⁵² 

The diagnostic manual of psychiatry is called the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” not the Manual of Mental Illnesses, for the simple reason that these conditions have never been shown to be illnesses.  Indeed this very manual, which is used to bill insurance companies, admits that the boundary separating an alleged disorder from mental wellness is hazy:  According to the manual, “There is no assumption that each category of mental disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries dividing it from other mental disorders or from no mental disorder.⁵³

Without such boundaries anyone can be – and often is – labeled with a psychiatric disorder.  Psychiatric disorders are not diagnosed.  They are the result of a labeling process based upon highly subjective and arbitrary criteria.  As biopsychiatrist Nancy Andreasen, the former editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry, has stated, the boundaries of duration (symptoms lasting a certain period of time) and severity (symptoms occurring “often” or “frequently”) used in psychiatric diagnosis are “boundaries of convenience … not boundaries with any inherent biological meaning.”⁵⁴

Moreover, no test exists for alleged mental illnesses.  The President of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Steven Sharfstein, recently conceded, “We do not have a clean-cut lab test”⁵⁵ for these alleged imbalances.  The Surgeon General’s 1999 report put it more bluntly:  “… there is no definitive lesion, laboratory test, or abnormality in brain tissue than can identify these illnesses.”⁵⁶  Glenmullen writes, “A serotonin deficiency for depression has not been found.”⁵⁷   The Consensus Statement of the 1998 National Institutes of Health “NIH Consensus Development Conference on Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” stated, “… we do not have an independent, valid test for ADHD, and there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.”

In short, there is no medical reason for mental health screening.  There is no illness and no test for illness.  The use of the word screening, like the phrase “mental illness” itself, is merely another marketing ploy to get the public to think of mental and emotional problems as brain disease.  It is one means of assuring that more children will be placed on the assembly line that leads to a psychiatric diagnosis and a psychiatric drug.

The number of children being placed on that assembly line is skyrocketing. 

The Escalating Psychiatric Drugging of Children

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, “The annual number of visits by school-age children 5–17 years of age to physician offices and hospital outpatient departments with a stimulant drug prescribed, ordered, or provided increased from 2.6 million in 1994–96 to over 5.0 million in 2000–2002….   Between 1994–96 and 2000–2002 the annual number of visits by school-age children 5–17 years of age with an antidepressant increased from 1.1 million to 3.1 million.”⁵⁸  

A 2002 study published in the journal Pediatrics found, “from 1988 to 1994, there was a 3- to 5-fold increase in the prevalence of ATD [antidepressant] treatment of US youths who were younger than 20 years.”⁵⁹

Lawrence Diller, M.D., a well-known behavioral pediatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of the book Running on Ritalin, cites IMS Health, a company that compiles prescribing statistics for the pharmaceutical industry, for his finding that between 1995 and 1999 the use of Prozac-like drugs for children under 6 increased 580% and the use of new antipsychotic drugs for children under 18 grew by nearly 300%.⁶⁰   In a separate article on WebMD Medical News, Diller is quoted as saying that Ritalin use increased by nearly 700% between 1990 and 1997.⁶¹

Meanwhile, following the historic pattern of psychiatric drugs, the public is finally being warned about the real dangers posed by these drugs – a decade or more after their release.

  The Drugs

 On October 15, 2004, the FDA ordered drug manufacturers to add a “black box” warning to the labeling of all antidepressants warning, “Antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders.”  The increased risk was double the risk on placebo.⁶²

 The FDA “black box” order came:

-  over 13 years after a panel of nine psychiatrists, many with significant conflicts of interest and financial 
ties to pharmaceutical companies, advised the FDA that there was “no credible evidence of a causal link 
between the use of antidepressant drugs, including Prozac, and suicidality or violent behavior.”63  
 
-  nearly 20 years after an internal Eli Lilly (makers of Prozac) document stated, "The incidence 
rate (suicide) under fluoxetine (Prozac) therefore purely mathematically is 5.6 times higher than under 
the other active medication imipramine." . . . "The benefits vs. risks considerations for fluoxetine (Prozac) 
currently does not fall clearly in favor of the benefits.”64 
 
-  over a decade after clinical trials for Effexor and Serzone showed that 64 of 68 suicides or attempts 
occurred among those taking the active drugs rather than a placebo.65 
 
-  7 years after Thomas Moore, a fellow at the Center for Health Services Research and Policy at 
George Washington University, analyzed FDA records from 1987-97 and reported, “Over a ten 
year period Prozac was associated with more hospitalizations, deaths, or other serious adverse 
eactions reported to the FDA than any other drug in America.  Two similar drugs for depression, 
Paxil and Zoloft, are of similar toxicity.”66
 
-  five years after Dr. Malcolm Bowers of Yale University reported in Clinical Psychiatry News 
that psychosis induced by the newer antidepressants (known as selective serotonin reuptake 
inhibitors or SSRIs) accounted for 8% of all general psychiatric hospital admissions over 
one 14-month period.67

 Withdrawal symptoms, often severe, are commonplace with the newer antidepressants, estimated 

to occur in 86% of individuals prescribed Luvox and 50% of those on Paxil.68  According to Harvard 

sychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen, “…the frequency of withdrawal phenomena cited by the pharmaceutical 

companies is much lower than what one sees in clinical practice….”69
 
The story is no better for stimulants like ritalin (methylphenidate) and the newer antipsychotics.  
 
On June 30, 2005, the FDA released a statement that it had “identified two possible safety concerns 
with the methylphenidate drug products: psychiatric adverse events and cardiovascular adverse events.”  
Psychiatric events included “visual hallucinations, suicidal ideation, psychotic behavior, as well as 
aggression or violent behavior.”70  The FDA is moving forward with plans to rewrite the labels for 
Concerta, Ritalin and other drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to 
warn of these side effects.71  Another ADHD drug, Adderal, was recently removed from the 
market in Canada after reports of 20 sudden deaths in patients, including 12 strokes.72  On 
Dec. 17, 2004, the FDA asked the manufacturer of Strattera to add a bolded warning about 
the potential of severe liver injury to the labeling.73
 
In his book, Mad in America, Robert Whitaker details the unbelievable duplicity of the 
pharmaceutical companies in researching and marketing antipsychotic drugs, including the 
newer, highly touted, atypical antipsychotics.  Whitaker reveals the actual devastating side 
effects of these drugs (including seizures, potentially fatal blood diseases and cardiomyopathy) 
and how they shift long term outcomes away from recovery and toward chronic illness.  During 
the clinical trials of one atypical, olanzapine (Zyprexa), twenty-two percent of the olanzapine 
patients suffered a serious adverse event and two-thirds did not complete the trials.74  Studies 
have now confirmed that risperidone (Risperdal) is equal to or worse than the older 
antispychotics (e.g., Haldol) in producing serious movement disorders (Parkinsonism and 
tardive dyskinesia).75
 
On April 13, 2004, the FDA requested that a warning be added to the prescribing 
information for all atypical antipsychotics regarding the risk of hyperglycemia and diabetes.76
 
Many books have been written about the serious side effects of all these drugs – 
antidepressants, stimulants, and antipsychotics.  It is possible only to briefly suggest 
here the degree of damage they can inflict on the human body and mind.  One shudders 
to think of the effects they produce on the developing bodies and brains of young children.
 
So how is it possible for such drugs to reach the market and for the truth about their 
effects to be hidden for decades?  The answers to that question are complex but to a 
great degree they are explained by the power of the pharmaceutical industry to control 
both the outcomes of drug studies - to get the results they want – and the marketing of 
those outcomes.  
 
In 2000 Marcia Angell, the former Editor in Chief of the New England Journal of 
Medicine (NEJM), and a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School, wrote 
an editorial in the NEJM titled, “Is Academic Medicine for Sale?”  She wrote 
about their difficulties finding a research psychiatrist to write an editorial about 
the treatment of depression because “we found very few who did not have 
financial ties to drug companies that make antidepressants.”77 She reported 
extensive ties between medical schools, clinical researchers and the drug 
industry and noted, “there is now considerable evidence that researchers 
with ties to drug companies are indeed more likely to report results that are 
favorable to the products of those companies than researchers without such 
ties.”78

The story is no better for stimulants like ritalin (methylphenidate) and the newer antipsychotics.  

On June 30, 2005, the FDA released a statement that it had “identified two possible safety concerns 

with the methylphenidate drug products: psychiatric adverse events and cardiovascular adverse events.”  

Psychiatric events included “visual hallucinations, suicidal ideation, psychotic behavior, as well as 

aggression or violent behavior.”70  The FDA is moving forward with plans to rewrite the labels for 

Concerta, Ritalin and other drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to 

warn of these side effects.71  Another ADHD drug, Adderal, was recently removed from the 

market in Canada after reports of 20 sudden deaths in patients, including 12 strokes.72  On 

Dec. 17, 2004, the FDA asked the manufacturer of Strattera to add a bolded warning about 

the potential of severe liver injury to the labeling.73

In his book, Mad in America, Robert Whitaker details the unbelievable duplicity of the 

pharmaceutical companies in researching and marketing antipsychotic drugs, including the 

newer, highly touted, atypical antipsychotics.  Whitaker reveals the actual devastating side 

effects of these drugs (including seizures, potentially fatal blood diseases and cardiomyopathy) 

and how they shift long term outcomes away from recovery and toward chronic illness.  During 

the clinical trials of one atypical, olanzapine (Zyprexa), twenty-two percent of the olanzapine 

patients suffered a serious adverse event and two-thirds did not complete the trials.74  Studies 

have now confirmed that risperidone (Risperdal) is equal to or worse than the older 

antispychotics (e.g., Haldol) in producing serious movement disorders (Parkinsonism and 

tardive dyskinesia).75

On April 13, 2004, the FDA requested that a warning be added to the prescribing 

information for all atypical antipsychotics regarding the risk of hyperglycemia and diabetes.76

Many books have been written about the serious side effects of all these drugs – 

antidepressants, stimulants, and antipsychotics.  It is possible only to briefly suggest 

here the degree of damage they can inflict on the human body and mind.  One shudders 

to think of the effects they produce on the developing bodies and brains of young children.

So how is it possible for such drugs to reach the market and for the truth about their 

effects to be hidden for decades?  The answers to that question are complex but to a 

great degree they are explained by the power of the pharmaceutical industry to control 

both the outcomes of drug studies - to get the results they want – and the marketing of 

those outcomes.  

In 2000 Marcia Angell, the former Editor in Chief of the New England Journal of 

Medicine (NEJM), and a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School, wrote 

an editorial in the NEJM titled, “Is Academic Medicine for Sale?”  She wrote 

about their difficulties finding a research psychiatrist to write an editorial about 

the treatment of depression because “we found very few who did not have 

financial ties to drug companies that make antidepressants.”77 She reported 

extensive ties between medical schools, clinical researchers and the drug 

industry and noted, “there is now considerable evidence that researchers 

with ties to drug companies are indeed more likely to report results that are 

favorable to the products of those companies than researchers without such 

ties.”78

There are numerous methods by which drug studies can be manipulated to 

produce favorable results and to hide serious side effects.  And not all – or even a majority – of the 

clinical trials of a drug need to produce a positive result to gain FDA approval.  Once the drug is approved, 

million dollar marketing campaigns advertise to doctors, consumers and government officials that the new 

drugs are safe and effective.

We have seen this with both the newer antidepressants and antipsychotics.  A 2002 review of 47 studies on antidepressant drugs, the actual studies that the FDA used for approving six newer antidepressants, found the drugs to be only slightly more effective than placebo, a difference that may simply reflect the enhanced placebo effect of the drugs.⁷⁹ A July 2005 study in the British Medical Journal presented several important conclusions:

“Longitudinal follow-up studies show very poor outcomes for people treated for depression both in hospital and in the community….”

“Meta-analyses of data from controlled trials have not found reduced rates of suicide or suicidal behaviour in drug arms compared with placebo arms.”

“Evidence that antidepressants are more effective in more severe conditions is not strong, and data on long term outcome of depression and suicide do not provide convincing evidence of benefit.”⁸⁰

The newer antipsychotics have been claimed to be light years ahead of the older drugs like Haldol and Thorazine.  But mounting evidence suggests the atypicals are every bit as dangerous as their predecessors – and just as ineffective.  Three years of outcome reports from the King County Mental Health, Chemical Abuse and Dependency Services Division have shown that less than 8% of seriously emotionally disturbed individuals in the King County System ever move out of that category and many of them regress back.⁸¹ This has occurred during a time when the use of atypicals has steadily increased.

The Future – Washington’s Brave New Schools

There is no question that many children are suffering greatly and that their suffering all too often erupts in emotional and behavior disturbances.  But childhood disturbances have not been shown to be caused by any brain disease or chemical imbalance and there is no test for such alleged imbalances. 

We do know, however, that children face a multitude of challenges growing up today.  High divorce rates, high numbers of children being born out of wedlock, broken families, poverty, poor physical health, poor nutrition, the failure of the educational system, hours spent in front of TV sets, and exposure to psychological (pornography) and environmental toxins are just a few of the factors impinging on children today.

The psychiatric industry feeds on this societal decline by ignoring the root causes of childhood difficulties and locating the source of the problem in brain chemistry.  As a result, resources that could be used to provide children with mentoring, nurturing relationships and a sense of community, are spent diagnosing them with invented illnesses and prescribing psychiatric drugs.  We discover too late that for over a decade children have been put on drugs that double their risk of suicide, even though there is no convincing evidence there is anything wrong with their brains – not even a test to establish any abnormality.  What do you tell the parents children who committed suicide on antidepressants when they discover the psychiatrists and drug companies knew of the danger for years and did nothing?

It doesn’t take screening to help a child.  You don’t have to screen kids to find out what is going on in their lives, to give them love, structure, and guidance, to mentor them and provide for their basic needs for health, community, communication, support and a sense that they are winning in life.

But as Washington jumps on the New Freedom Commission bandwagon, its citizens will be hit with “marketing campaigns” designed to convince them that the problems of children (and adults) are illnesses.  Marketing campaigns will tell us how many Washington children are “sick,” how their troubles in life are due to mental illnesses, and how we can spot the symptoms of these “illnesses.”  Marketing campaigns will tell us how consumers and families are an integral part of the system planning and treatment decisions when in fact those decisions have already been made the psycho-pharmaceutical complex and its allies.  Marketing campaigns will predict dire consequences for children who don’t get psychiatric help early.  Marketing campaigns will promote “evidence-based” practices, insuring that the drug companies who spend billions of dollars to produce the “evidence” have the upper hand.  Marketing campaigns will tell us we need to accept psychiatric labeling to reduce the stigma of mental illness.

The end result will be the increasing alienation of parents, teachers, and adults from children, who are increasingly seen as abnormal and needing to be sent to “experts” for “professional” help.  The number of children diagnosed with psychiatric disorders will rise, as will the number of children placed on psychiatric drugs.  The “epidemic” will be used to call for increased psychiatric intervention in schools and the cycle will repeat itself, as it has for decades.  It will all sound very reasonable.

Parents be forewarned.  The marketing campaigns are coming and the psychiatric/pharmaceutical complex is coming for your children.  You will be told it involves parental consent and perhaps, initially, it will.  But unless the takeover of schools by the psychiatric industry is fought now, the time will inevitably come when school attendance will require a psychiatric evaluation and children will come home from school with a report card, a diagnosis and, who knows, a prescription as well.

What Can Be Done?

Several actions can and should be taken to stem the psychiatric takeover of our educational system.

1.      We should demand that our legislature pass laws – as many other states have done – to severely restrict psychiatric testing, diagnosis in schools.  We should ensure that state laws protect parents who do not want their children screened.   No child should be required to be psychiatrically drugged as a condition of attending public school and parents who choose not to psychiatrically drug their children should be protected from pressure by Child Protective Services or any other state agency to drug their children.

2.      We must educate ourselves about the damaging effects of psychiatric drugs and their lack of effectiveness.  We must educate ourselves about the lack of science behind psychiatric theories and labels.  We must understand that what is being marketing in the coming marketing campaigns is a psychiatric label and a psychiatric drug.

3.      We must shift resources from programs which psychiatrically label and/or drug children to programs which help children without resorting to psychiatric labeling.

4.      Parents must educate themselves about who’s behind the movement toward universal screening and the financial relationships between the drug companies and psychiatric front groups like the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and TeenScreen.  Journalist Evelyn Pringle has written a series of excellent exposes on the links between the pharmaceutical industry, TMAP and universal screening.  Go to www.onlinejournal.com and click on the “Health” section and read her reports there.