While testifying before the committee on March 2, 2004, Flynn praised the NFC for recommending TeenScreen. "I am especially pleased to report that the commission named the ... TeenScreen Program a model program for early intervention."
Flynn's testimony discussing TeenScreen's goal of finding students to "link them with treatment:"
"In 2003, we were able to screen approximately 14,200 teens at these sites; among those students, we were able to identify approximately 3,500 youth with mental health problems and link them with treatment. This year, we believe we will be able to identify close to 10,000 teens in need, a 300 percent increase over last year."
For instance, according to a report in the April 25, 2005, Columbus Dispatch, as of July, 2004, nearly 40,000 Ohio children on Medicaid were already on psychiatric drugs. After concerns were raised nationally about the number of kids being medicated, a reporter for the Dispatch investigated prescriptions records paid for by the Ohio Medicaid program and discovered that 31% of children ages 6 to 18 in foster and group homes, were on mental-health drugs. And 22% of kids in detention were on psychiatric drugs as of January, 2005, with many on five or more.
These drugs have never been approved for kids and they have been found to cause suicide and violence. Nearly all the children involved in violent rampages in recent years have been on the antidepressants known as SSRIs.
Christopher Pittman, the 12-year-old who shot and killed his grandparents while they slept, and then burned down the house, was on Zoloft. In describing the event, Christopher said it was like he was watching a show on television and that he could see everything happening but there was no way to stop it.
One of the country's leading experts on SSRIs, Dr Ann Tracey, explains that people on these drugs, like Christopher, will appear as if they are wide awake, when in fact they are half asleep walking around in a dream-like state.
Despite the testimony of two highly qualified psychiatrists that Christopher was "involuntarily intoxicated" on Zoloft that night, the jury found him guilty, and barring a miracle, this poor child will sit in prison for the next 30 years because a negligent doctor placed him on a lethal medication.
Dr Grace Jackson is against giving kids drugs. "It would be difficult to engage in a form of medical experimentation more potentially hazardous than child psychopharmacology. With increasing frequency, researchers have demonstrated how and why the psychiatric drugs are powerful neuroendocrine disruptors which exert negative effects upon cognition, growth, metabolism, and reproductive functioning," she explained.
According to Jackson, "The question should not be whether or not American children are being "overdrugged" -- rather, the question should be: what evidence justifies the drugging of even one child ?"
State Officials Compromised By TMAP
Allan Jones was an Investigator in the Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General, when the PennMap scheme was set up in Pennsylvania. According to Jones, "TMAP and the NFC represent the deceptive marketing of fraudulent science through the corruption of our governmental safeguards at all levels."
When charged with examining the receipt of drug company funds by state employees, Jones said, "I began to look at the overall issue of Pharma marketing and immediately became alarmed that the tactics used in marketing to the private sector were being replicated with public employees. Trips, perks, travel, honorariums, consultant fees etc."
"The most shady aspects of the program emerged quickly," he said, "the recommended drugs were exclusively new, patented and expensive and were selected by persons with financial ties to Pharma; and the claims of increased efficacy and safety made by the drug companies and State employees, were contradicted by the available science," Jones discovered.
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