New Freedom Initiative/Manadatory Mental Health Screening of American Children Passes

Infowars.com | November 23, 2004
On Monday morning, Alex talked to Jeff Diest from Congressman Ron Paul's office.
Diest confirmed that Ron Paul's amendment requiring parental consent prior to government psychological testing/mental screening of all school children was not added to the bill.
The New Freedom Initiative passed sans amendment, as it stood.
The implications of this Orwellian initiative are terrifying. Here is some background:
Bush to screen population for mental illness
Sweeping initiative links diagnoses to treatment with specific drugs

WorldNetDaily.com | June 21, 2004

President Bush plans to unveil next month a sweeping mental health initiative that recommends screening for every citizen and promotes the use of expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs favored by supporters of the administration.

The New Freedom Initiative, according to a progress report , seeks to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the community, rather than institutions," the British Medical Journal reported.

Critics say the plan protects the profits of drug companies at the expense of the public.

The initiative began with Bush's launch in April 2002 of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which conducted a "comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system."

The panel found that "despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for "consumers of all ages," including preschool children.

The commission said, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviors and emotional disorders."

Schools, the panel concluded, are in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools.

The commission recommended that the screening be linked with "treatment and supports," including "state-of-the-art treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions."

The Texas Medication Algorithm Project, or TMAP, was held up by the panel as a "model" medication treatment plan that "illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes."

The TMAP -- started in 1995 as an alliance of individuals from the pharmaceutical industry, the University of Texas and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas -- also was praised by the American Psychiatric Association, which called for increased funding to implement the overall plan.

But the Texas project sparked controversy when a Pennsylvania government employee revealed state officials with influence over the plan had received money and perks from drug companies who stand to gain from it.

Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General says in his whistleblower report the "political/pharmaceutical alliance" that developed the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, was behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which were "poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab."

Jones points out, according to the British Medical Journal, companies that helped start the Texas project are major contributors to Bush's election funds. Also, some members of the New Freedom Commission have served on advisory boards for these same companies, while others have direct ties to TMAP.

Eli Lilly, manufacturer of olanzapine, one of the drugs recommended in the plan, has multiple ties to the Bush administration, BMJ says. The elder President Bush was a member of Lilly's board of directors and President Bush appointed Lilly's chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, to the Homeland Security Council.

Of Lilly's $1.6 million in political contributions in 2000, 82 percent went to Bush and the Republican Party.

Another critic, Robert Whitaker, journalist and author of "Mad in America," told the British Medical Journal that while increased screening "may seem defensible," it could also be seen as "fishing for customers."

Exorbitant spending on new drugs "robs from other forms of care such as job training and shelter program," he said.

However, a developer of the Texas project, Dr. Graham Emslie, defends screening.

"There are good data showing that if you identify kids at an earlier age who are aggressive, you can intervene ... and change their trajectory."
Rep. Ron Paul seeks to yank program, decries use of drugs on children

WND |September 9, 2004
By Ron Strom

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, plans to offer an amendment in the House of Representatives today that would remove from an appropriations bill a new mandatory mental-health screening program for America's children.

"The American tradition of parents deciding what is best for their children is, yet again, under attack," writes Kent Snyder of the Paul-founded Liberty Committee. "The pharmaceutical industry has convinced President Bush to support mandatory mental-health screening for every child in America, including preschool children, and the industry is now working to convince Congress as well."

As WorldNetDaily reported, the New Freedom Initiative recommends screening not only for children but eventually for every American. The initiative came out of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which President Bush established in 2002.

Critics of the plan say it is a thinly veiled attempt by drug companies to provide a wider market for high-priced antidepressants and antipsychotic medication, and puts government in areas of Americans' lives where it does not belong.

Writes Snyder: "The real payoff for the drug companies is the forced drugging of children that will result – as we learned tragically with Ritalin – even when parents refuse."

Paul's amendment to the Labor, HHS and Education Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005 would take the new program out of the funding bill.

The congressman, who is known for his strict adherence to the Constitution, wrote in a letter to his colleagues: "As you know, psychotropic drugs are increasingly prescribed for children who show nothing more than children's typical rambunctious behavior. Many children have suffered harmful effects from these drugs. Yet some parents have even been charged with child abuse for refusing to drug their children. The federal government should not promote national mental-health screening programs that will force the use of these psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin."

The New Freedom Commission found that "despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended comprehensive mental-health screening for "consumers of all ages," including preschool children.

The commission said, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviors and emotional disorders."

Schools, the panel concluded, are in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools.

The state of Illinois has already approved its own mental-health screening program, the Children's Mental Health Act of 2003, which will provide screening for "all children ages 0-18" and "ensure appropriate and culturally relevant assessment of your children's social and emotional development with the use of standardized tools."

Members of the Illinois Children's Mental Health Partnership have held several public hearings on the program in recent months, hearing from parents and others who oppose the mandatory screening.

Karen R. Effrem, M.D., is a physician and leading opponent of mandatory screening. She is on the board of directors of EdWatch, an organization that actively opposes federal control of education.

"I am concerned, especially in the schools, that mental health could be used as a wedge for diagnosis based on attitudes, values, beliefs and political stances – things like perceived homophobia," Effrem told WorldNetDaily.

"There are several violence-prevention programs that do say if a person is homophobic, they could be considered potentially violent."

Continued Effrem: "This mental-health program could be used as an enforcement tool to impose a very politically correct, anti-American curriculum."

Effrem emphasized the new program has no guarantees of parental rights, noting some children have died because parents were coerced to put their kids on psychiatric medications.

Snyder says the following groups have come out in opposition to the screening program: Eagle Forum, Gun Owners of America, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Concerned Women of America, Freedom 21, the Alliance for Human Research Protection, and the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology.

A screening program in Paul's home state began nearly ten years ago. The Texas Medication Algorithm Project, or TMAP, was held up by the New Freedom Commission as a "model" medication treatment plan that "illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes."

The TMAP – started in 1995 as an alliance of individuals from the pharmaceutical industry, the University of Texas and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas – also was praised by the American Psychiatric Association, which called for increased funding to implement the overall plan.

But the Texas project sparked controversy when a Pennsylvania government employee revealed state officials with influence over the plan had received money and perks from drug companies who stand to gain from it.

Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General says in his whistleblower report the "political/pharmaceutical alliance" that developed the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, was behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which were "poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab."

Jones points out, according to a British Medical Journal report, companies that helped start the Texas project are major contributors to Bush's re-election. Also, some members of the New Freedom Commission have served on advisory boards for these same companies, while others have direct ties to TMAP.





Mental Health and World Citizenship

Dr. Dennis Cuddy | August 11 2004

In a recent article, I related that the Bush administration's Secretary of Education Rod Paige last October 3 declared that the U.S. is pleased to rejoin UNESCO where we could develop common strategies to prepare our children to become "citizens of the world."

Then on June 21 WorldNetDaily published "Life With Big Brother: Bush to screen population for mental illness" describing President Bush's "New Freedom Initiative" that would have every citizen receive a mental health screening. What one needs to guard against is the use of mental health to pursue world government.

The theme of the administration of President Woodrow Wilson was "The New Freedom" and it pursued the ideals of PHILIP DRU: ADMINISTRATOR, written in 1912 by President Wilson's chief adviser, Col. Edward M. House, who wrote of "socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx." Education would be a primary vehicle for achieving the objective, and John Dewey, the father of progressive education, promoted socialism. He said the society or group is most important, and that independent individualists have a form of "insanity."

By the late 1940s, Dewey's progressive education was becoming dominant in American public schools. And in 1948 an International Congress on Mental Health was held in London with publication of a document "Mental Health and World Citizenship," declaring that "world citizenship can be widely extended among all peoples through the application of the principles of mental health." The Congress promoted the U.N. as the vehicle for promoting this objective, and UNESCO's director-general Sir Julian Huxley the same year wrote in UNESCO: ITS PURPOSE AND ITS PHILOSOPHY that "political unification in some sort of world government will be required."

The 1950s and 1960s saw the growing strength of Dewey's progressive educational philosophy and mental health advocacy, and in 1965 the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children was established. In 1969, the Commission released its report, which stated: "As the home and church decline in influence...schools must begin to provide adequately for the emotional and moral development of children....The school...must assume a direct responsibility for the attitudes and values of child development. The child advocate, psychologist, social technician, and medical technician should all reach aggressively into the community, send workers out to children's homes, recreation facilities, and schools. They should assume full responsibility for all education, including pre-primary education."

In the 1970s, a representative of HEW (U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare) approached North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt, Jr. about developing a model for child health care around the nation. The N.C. Plan was called "Child Health Plan for Raising a New Generation," and included establishing a "health care home" for every child, stating "responsibilities belonging to child and family are required." The plan was released in 1979, the same year the N.C. State Health Plan was adopted, linking in two places religion with mental illness and mental retardation.

In the same year (1979), Bill Clinton (supported by Hillary Clinton) began Arkansas' Governor's School for the Gifted and Talented, modeled after the first Governor's School in the nation which was established in 1963 in N.C., was funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation, and was attended by the writer of this article. We were given various psychological tests which, I believe, looked at us as guinea pigs to be remoulded for the Brave New World of the future.

When Hillary Clinton became First Lady of the U.S. in 1993, she was in charge of a health care task force, about half the members of whom were connected with the Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Foundation. On the NBC "Today Show" (January 23, 1990), Dr. Michael Lewis of the New Jersey Robert Wood Johnson Medical School had claimed: "Lying is an important part of social life, and children who are unable to do it are children who may have developmental problems."

What Hillary Clinton's task force was proposing was basically socialized medicine. Hillary's friend, former N.C. Gov. Hunt, became director of RWJ's Mental Health Services for Youth program. And regarding a January 4-5, 1996 symposium in Frankfurt, KY, attended by attorney Kent Masterson Brown, the attorney said: "He (former Gov. Hunt) came to Governor Wallace Wilkinson in Kentucky and told him that RWJ would like Kentucky to become part of this mental health program for youth, and said we'll give you $100,000 to plan a program....That's what they do. I mean, you think that's just buying legislation. Well, it is."

The next year, early in 1997, former Gov. Hunt was chairman of the National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) and promoted the Early Childhood Public Engagement Campaign that actor Rob Reiner and others were starting, with the Carnegie Corporation once again playing a critical role (the Carnegie Institution in 1904 had financed the establishment of a biological experiment station related to eugenics at Cold Spring Harbor, NY). The NEGP indicated a desire for the creation of a nationalized system of child care from age zero based upon the principles of brain research (mental health). Roy Roemer, Governor of Colorado at the time, stated: "The ideal system would be...in every community or county you have an organizational structure that is responsible for the zero to 6, zero to 3 age level for the child....And then finally put in a hooker and say, 'Hey, you don't get any payments from state on their highways until you do this job.'"

It may be this same type of coercive tactic that is used to facilitate the current New Freedom Initiative. Mental health screenings may be attached to the current vaccines most children are required to receive to attend public schools. And for older people, they may be asked by insurance companies to "voluntarily" accept the screenings if they don't want their premiums to increase.

In 2001, President George W. Bush worked with U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy to pass the federal "No Child Left Behind" legislation, which includes provisions for expanding school-based mental health programs. This fits with the report of The New Freedom in Mental Health Commission, which stressed that "schools must be partners in the mental health care of our children."

Where is all this leading? In the third volume of Arthur Calhoun's A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FAMILY, published in 1919 and widely used as a social service textbook, one reads: "The new view is that the higher and more obligatory relation is to society rather than to the family; the family goes back to the age of savagery while the state belongs to the age of civilization. The modern individual is a world citizen, served by the world, and home interests can no longer be supreme....As soon as the new family, consisting of only the parents and the children, stood forth, society saw how many were unfit for parenthood and began to realize the need of community care....As familism weakens, society has to assume a larger parenthood. The school begins to assume responsibility for the functions thrust upon it....The kindergarten grows downward toward the cradle and there arises talk of neighborhood nurseries....Social centers replace the old time home chimney....The chlld passes more and more into the custody of community experts....In the new social order, extreme emphasis is sure to be placed upon eugenic procreation....It seems clear that at least in its early stages, socialism will mean an increased amount of social control....We may expect in the socialist commonwealth a system of public educational agencies that will begin with the nursery and follow the individual through life....Those persons that experience alarm at the thought of intrinsic changes in family institutions should remember that in the light of social evolution, nothing is right or valuable in itself."

Relevant to this, Clinton administration official Mary Jo Bane said almost 30 years ago that "in order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them." (TULSA SUNDAY WORLD, August 21, 1977) And about that same time, HEW Executive Assistant Eddie Bernice Johnson (who would later become a Congresswoman from Texas) advocated the licensing of parents before they would be permitted to have children. Licensing of parents has also been proposed by Prof. Gene Stephens (THE FUTURIST, April 1981) and Dr. Jack Westman (LICENSING PARENTS, 1994).

Under the American socialism planned for our future, government will increasingly control our lives via mental health screening and education, among other means. Only if the American people resist these efforts as soon as possible will we be successful in thwarting the plans of the power elite.

http://www.infowars.com/articles/brave_new_world/new_freedom_paul_amendment.htm