LOS ANGELES: With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under federal investigation for suppressing evidence that antidepressants can lead to child suicide, alarmed parents across the U.S. are asking members of the U.S. Senate for federal safeguards against coerced child drugging in schools.
In the wake of increasing reports by parents who had been threatened, pressured or forced to give their children psychiatric drugs as a condition of attending school, the U.S. House of Representatives acted swiftly in passing the Child Medication Safety Act by a landslide vote of 425 to one in May of 2003. The bill, which prohibits this abusive practice, was then introduced into the Senate in July 2003, yet despite increasing information on the dangers of the drugs and their lethal effects on children, the Senate has yet to pass the bill.
Mrs. Patty Weathers, president of the grassroots parents' rights group Parents for Label and Drug Free Education, says, "I was one of the hundreds of parents who have been coerced by school officials to drug my son. I was later charged with medical neglect for taking my son off of one of the drugs that is now under investigation for causing children to commit suicide. It is abhorrent to me that parents can be forced to play Russian roulette with their children's lives, and we are without rights to protect them. Children who have been forced onto these drugs have died."
Mrs. Weathers founded the grassroots parent group in order to help educate other parents and enact safeguards for parents' rights. She has garnered signatures from more than 740 parents across the nation that have faced similar abuse and coercion on her website www.ablechild.org, which was written in support of the Child Medication Safety Act.
Bruce Wiseman, the U.S. President of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog, says "The need for federal legislation is apparent when growing numbers of parents report intense pressure and coercion to drug their children via the public schools. And while it is hard to believe that anyone could oppose a federal bill which would reinforce a parents right not to give their child a potentially lethal drug, there are groups with vested interests in the drugging of children who have actively opposed the federal bill."
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is one of the strong opponents of the bill that would protect parents' and children's rights. Even more alarming is that despite international concern and government investigations of the drugs being given to children, the APA has yet to issue a warning to psychiatrists to cease prescribing them.
CCHR co-founder, renowned New York professor of psychiatry Dr. Thomas Szasz, says the psychiatric industry has mislead governments and the public about the validity of the mental disorders as "a brain-based disease" or "chemical imbalance," to justify the mass drugging of children without a shred of scientific evidence to substantiate these claims.
"There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases," insists Szasz, "Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning and punishment, not treatment."
Recent reports show that the child drugging market is rapidly growing, contributing to the vested interests which oppose the bill. Between 1995 and 1999, the use of antidepressants for 7 to 12 year olds increased 151% and 580% for children under six, with some as young as five committing suicide.
Concerned citizens are urging immediate Senate action.
Published: May 10, 2004
Author: Marla Filidei
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an international psychiatric watchdog group co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. Contact CCHR's Media Department at 800-869-2247 or humanrights@cchr.org.
