The Clarion-Leader
August 13, 2002
"Unelected school boards should not presume to have the authority to place psychiatry, which is highly controversial, into the public school system. Concerned Women for America of Mississippi takes the position that mental health should not be associated with or appear to be associated with public school property or with any public education personnel."
—Glenda Gill
Legislative Liaison
Concerned Women for America of Mississippi
The Arizona Republic
August 16, 2002
"Programs like TeenScreen experiment on kids, who will eventually end up on psychotropic drugs...I went through what I went through because they were on antidepressants."
—Mark Taylor
Survivor - Columbine High School shooting
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
October 21, 2003
"Authorities in schools should be very cautious about these kinds of screening programs. It is easy to overidentify adolescents with problems, when they in fact don't have any problems. This in itself creates more problems."
—Louis A. Chandler
Chairman of the Psychology in Education Department
University of Pittsburgh.
The Olympian
September 25, 2004
"We should ask ourselves: What kind of people would we have become if the government tested us and forced our parents to drug us in order to settle us down?"
—Rosie Morton
Eagle Forum
November 16, 2004
"Big Brother is on the march. A plan to subject all children to mental health screening is under way, and pharmaceutical companies are gearing up for bigger sales of psychotropic drugs."
—Phyllis Schlafly
Lawyer, Political Analyst and Author
The New York Post
December 5, 2004
"It's just a way to put more people on prescription drugs... such programs will boost the sale of antidepressants ... even after the FDA in September ordered a black box label warning that the pills might spur suicidal thoughts or actions in minors."
—Marcia Angell
Medical Ethics Lecturer
Harvard Medical School
United Press International
December 15, 2004
"What are the credentials of the screeners? Most importantly, how many children have they raised to adulthood, and with what outcome?"
—Dr. Jane M. Orient
Executive Director
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
Christian Science Monitor
January 20, 2005
"The pharmaceutical companies have been heavily involved in pushing programs like this, and they have an obvious, overt economic interest...They'll sell a lot more drugs if they can get more people diagnosed and put on them. We ought to be concerned about that."
—Sheldon Richman
Senior Fellow
Future of Freedom Foundation
Tampa Tribune
January 25, 2005
When Cheslea Rhoades took the test at her Osceola, Ind., high school last month, a clinician told her she demonstrated social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. She was stunned. So was her mom. "My daughter is an honor-roll student. She's in five clubs. There's nothing wrong with this kid," said Teresa Rhoades, Chelsea's mother.
Tampa Tribune
January 25, 2005
Board Chairwoman Nancy Bostock called the program "an intrusion for our students." False labels could embarrass students and cause turmoil at home. "We could seriously do more harm than good," she said.
Tampa Tribune
January 26, 2005
Pinellas school board member Jane Gallucci...said Tuesday that she was angry that Laurie Flynn told a U.S. Senate committee on health and education matters 10 months ago that pilot TeenScreen programs were operating in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
US Fed News
January 31, 2005
"It is important to understand that powerful interests, namely federal bureaucrats and pharmaceutical lobbies, are behind the push for mental health screening in schools...the pharmaceutical industry is eager to sell psychotropic drugs to millions of new customers in American schools."
— Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas
Des Moines Register
March 21, 2005
I see it as stepping into my role as a mom," said Pam Wheeler, who has a freshman and a senior at Des Moines' Lincoln High School, an Iowa TeenScreen site. "If these are 15-and 16-year-old kids, depending on the day of the week, or of the month, if they didn't make cheerleading or something, how does that affect this screening?" she asked.
The Washington Times
March 29, 2005
To paraphrase Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," the fault is not in our children's brains or genes, but in ourselves, and it is to our own treatment of children we must look to find an answer to their problems - and ours.
— Keith Hoeller
Editor
Review of Existential Psychology & Psychiatry
Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph
May 9, 2005
"The claim children are suffering from a 'chemical imbalance', the cornerstone of psychiatry's disease model, is nothing more than a myth."
— Brian Daniels
Citizens Commission on Human Rights UK
Sarasota Herald Tribune
May 17, 2005
"Scientific truth cannot be suppressed permanently. Eventually it will be widely known that people with normal brains can become mad by living in toxic social environments, and that the best therapy is based on caring relationships. I say this with trepidation because any criticism of the current chemical model brings angry denunciation from believers".
— George W. Albee
Emeritus professor, University of Vermont
Independent Media TV
May 22, 2005
Its time to start placing the blame for the rise in teen suicide where it belongs; on the greedy bastards involved in programs like TeenScreen who invent schemes to get our kids hooked on these dangerous drugs in the first place.
—Evelyn Pringle
Letter to Florida Secretary of State
May 26, 2005
"I share the concerns of many of the proponents of this bill who draw attention to the all too frequent use of pharmaceuticals for children whose health and behavioral problems may benefit from other forms of intervention. Further, I am a firm supporter of parental notification in all types of medical care provided to children."
—Jeb Bush
Florida Governor
Chicago Tribune
June 5, 2005
"When I listened to constituents on this issue, I heard real fear in their voices . . . that their kids would be labeled"
—Chris Lauzen
State Senator, Illinois
American Journal of Psychiatry
June, 2005
"A survey of recently trained child psychiatrists found that only one in 10 children in their practices does not receive a medication."
—Lawrence Diller, M.D.
Walnut Creek, Calif.
New York Times
June 7, 2005
""Pretty soon, we'll have a syndrome for short, fat Irish guys with a Boston accent, and I'll be mentally ill."
—Paul McHugh
Professor of psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University
Tampa Tribune
June 11, 2005
"Psychiatry has a long history of abject failure. Psychiatric treatments - drugs, electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomies - have harmed millions and robbed them of any hope of a normal life."
—Doyle Mills
New York Times
June 14, 2005
"Psychiatrists have been searching for more than a century for some biological marker for mental disease, to little avail."
—Benedict Carey
British Medical Journal
June 18, 2005
"The antidepressant and 'everybody's depressed' message was spun by a greedy pharmaceutical industry and a myopic medical profession. Stop the widespread use of antidepressants as they are eroding our wellbeing and dismiss life as a simple spark of synaptic electricity."
—Des Spence
General Practitioner
The Associated Press
June 30, 2005
"In our view, mental health can have other dimensions - societal and even spiritual dimensions that the government could not possibly oversee"
—Karen Hayes
Illinois director
Concerned Women for America
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
September 18, 2005
Led by groups like Ablechild.org and EdAction, these opponents want to prohibit schools from having anything to do with students' mental health, saying it is the job of parents to ensure their children's well-being.
Toledo Blade
September 18, 2005
Opponents of school-based mental health programs point to parents who say their children have been misdiagnosed with mental health problems, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and forced to take medication to attend classes after school officials pressured them to get psychological care.
Indianapolis Star
September 18, 2005
A history of giving the test to some students without parental permission, has put TeenScreen in the hot seat. Friday, a lawsuit outlining these complaints was filed in federal court in the Northern District of Indiana in South Bend by a Northern Indiana couple and their 16-year-old daughter. They charge that the test violates parental and child rights at federal and Indiana levels and invades privacy.
Rutherford Institute
Press Release
September 19, 2005
“Parents need to understand that there are some immediate steps which can be taken to combat the increasing problem of government encroaching into the privacy of the family. First, it’s critical to learn your rights as a parent. Second, contact your local school officials and demand that you be notified immediately if they are planning to conduct mental health screening on your children. Finally, follow the Rhoades’ example and fight back against this encroachment on parental rights.”
—John W. Whitehead
President and Founder of The Rutherford Institute
Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
September 25, 2005
“Often without direct parental consent, children undergo controversial, subjective and dubious screening for mental illness. Some of the results have been unwarranted diagnosis, misdiagnosis and the labeling of many children with a mental health disorder.”
—Larry Hanus
Your School and the Law
November 2, 2005
“There is growing opposition to the notion that schools should perform mental health screening. Groups like Concerned Women for America express fears that schools might make screening mandatory and that the pharmaceutical industry is encouraging this practice to open up a larger market for psychotropic medication”
—Marian Sheridan
Fond du Lac (Wis.) School District
New York Times
December 4, 2005
"Other critics worry that TeenScreen will funnel too many kids into treatment and lead to overuse of medication, with possibly dangerous results."
—Paul Raeburn
Star Ledger (New Jersey)
December 13, 2005
"It's sort of astonishing," said Laurie Flynn, executive director of TeenScreen, which stopped disclosing the names of schools using the survey because the districts are peppered with e-mails denouncing it."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
December 13, 2005
"But in recent months, there are signs that the backlash against TeenScreen may have diminished enthusiasm for mental health screening."
—Matthew Franck
OpEdNews.com
December 15, 2005
“I see an amazing rebellion stirring that cuts across usual political lines. A federal bureaucrat recently called this a "curious coalition" in the media. We are seeing traditionally conservative groups working together with progressive social justice and libertarian groups. The psychiatric drug companies have overextended themselves, and the general public is showing signs of waking up. I just hope they wake up very soon!”
—David Oaks
Director of MindFreedom International
Los Angeles Times
January 1, 2006
“The reason for this difference between psychiatry and other medical specialties has more to do with ideology than with science. A brief peek at both areas makes this point clear. All medicine rests on the premise that disease is a manifestation of diseased tissue. Hepatitis comes down to an inflamed liver, while lung tissue infiltrated with pneumococcus causes pneumonia. Every medical student learns this principle. Where, though, is the diseased tissue in psychopathological conditions?"
—Irwin Savodnik
Psychiatrist and philosopher - teaches at UCLA
National Public Radio
January 9, 2006
“This is a program that has some very vocal critics. They say Teenscreen usurps parental authority, sends kids to therapy who might not need it and they say the program encourages families to put adolescents on antidepressant drugs."
—JoAnne Silberner
The Minnesota Daily
February 2, 2006
“Moreover, the test has a disorder label for the most ordinary of behaviors, having technical terms for simple laziness and arguing with parents, both qualities that most children and young adults have experienced at some point."
—Editorial
The Philadelphia Inquirer
February 9, 2006
"We're going to screen these kids, slap a label on them, and then what?"
—Joseph Rogers
President of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania
The SouthEast Messenger
February 13, 2006
"According to TeenScreen, approximately one-third of students taking the test will score “positive” for mental illness. Up to 84 percent of those “positives” will end up being “false positives.” Doing the math, this could mean that for every 100 students screened, 33 will test as having a mental illness, and 28 of those 33 may discover they were identified by mistake. Talk about depressing! "
—Katelyn Sattler
The Columbus Dispatch
February 20, 2006
"The Dispatch should get behind high-school curriculum reform and good parenting, not TeenScreen. The best screening mechanism is concerned and caring adults who have common sense. Kids are happy when they are doing what they love and when someone loves them enough to pay attention."
—Cathy Sato
Tampa Tribune
March 12, 2006
"Kramer views Shern and other TeenScreen supporters as fronts for drug companies seeking to generate consumers for their products. "They're not the hangmen," he said. "They're the gallows-builders. They lead them [children] to the psych drugs.""
Tampa Tribune
March 19, 2006
"Implementation of screening programs such as TeenScreen has not been proven to prevent suicide, although they potentially bring many more customers to the mental health industry."
—Judy Aron
Director of Research, National Home Education Legal Defense
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 30, 2006
"Mental health lobbyists backed by millions of pharmaceutical dollars have already pushed for government support to adopt their agenda. The federal New Freedom Commission on Mental Health Initiative is an existing plan to have all Americans screened for mental illness."
—Rebecca Noble
