A regular commenter to this website has drawn my attention to a bill that has been proposed in the Connecticut state legislature. The bill would require public school and homeschooled children to be assessed by mental health practitioners at grades 6, 8, 10, and 12.
The bill, sponsored by Senator Toni Harp and Representative Toni Walker, is in response to the recent Sandy Hook murders.
And so it starts. Given the built-in vagueness of the DSM, and the inclusiveness bias of the mental health business, the outcome of these screenings (should the bill become law) is predictable: more and more parents disempowered with regards to their parenting responsibilities; more drugged children, and, tragically, more mass murders.
In my last post I expressed the belief that powerful forces in America are pushing for “mental heath reform” to distract us from the real issues, to promote the pharmaceutical industry, and to initiate a massive mental hospital building program.
Bills like the one now before the Connecticut legislature are the first step, and it is my prediction that you will see a great many more of these before this nonsense is over.
The great tragedy, of course, is that mental health screenings sound so benign – like we’re finally doing something good for these poor suffering children. But follow the money. Neither the psychiatrists nor Big Pharma are much into genuine altruism. Their objective is to have virtually everybody on some kind of drug. Perhaps there should be a diagnosis for people who are not enrolled in the mental health system: hyper-independence disorder!
I’m not saying that there aren’t difficult, out-of-control children. And I’m not saying that there aren’t parents with deficient parenting skills. But these are not illnesses, and these problems will not be solved by drugs.