Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2005 pp. 111-124 Screening for Mental Illness: The Merger of Eugenics and the Drug Industry Vera Hassner Sharav, MLS New York, NY The implementation by the President’s New Freedom Commission (NFC) to screen the entire United States population – children first – for presumed, undetected,…

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Slide 2: I’ll begin with the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health[1] recommendation to screen the US population for mental illness – 52 million children first. In no other democratic country has the government adopted a policy to screen the population for presumed, undetected, mental illness. The rationale behind this mind-boggling Orwellian nightmare is not improving mental health, but rather increasing life-long consumers of psychoactive drugs and to control behavior. Two NFC recommendations are designed to do just that. TeenScreen is promoted as a suicide prevention model when it in fact, increases the number of children labeled suicidal and depressed.

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“Forgotten Children” is an investigative report by Carole Keeton Strayhorn,[1] the Texas Comptroller (2004) who uncovered evidence that 60% of children in the Texas foster care system are being drugged with powerful psychotropic drugs, most of which have not been tested in or approved for use by children. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledges that many of these drugs have serious adverse side effects, both physical and psychological. The Comptroller said she was alarmed that in her review of a single month (November 2003), two powerful antipsychotic drugs — Risperdal and Zyprexa — made up half of the drugs prescribed to foster children in Texas. These two drugs have been approved only for adults for the treatment of psychosis – primarily schizophrenia – yet, she found that children as young as four, were receiving these powerful, mind-altering drugs.

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Presented by Vera Hassner Sharav
14th Tri-Service Clinical Investigation Symposium
Sponsored by The U.S. Army Medical Department and The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancment of Military Medicine

The cornerstone of public trust in medical research is the integrity of academic institutions and the expectation that universities, which rely on public funding, have a responsibility to serve the public good. Financial conflicts of interest affect millions of American people – those who are subjects of clinical trials testing new drugs and those who are prescribed drugs after their approval.

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A partial, Annotated Bibliography by Vera Hassner Sharav

For distribution: January, 2000

Although patients, families and the public were not informed – some would argue they were deceived – clinical psychiatrists and researchers have long known about severe adverse drug reactions (ADR) and disabling changes in the central nervous system in a high percentage of patients taking standard neuroleptic drugs.

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