Dear editor:

We all now cringe at the notion of eliminating life judged “unfit”, and with less unanimity, we reject sterilization to prevent birth from unfit parents such as the mentally retarded or mentally ill. One model remains, however, in the form of our mental health system, as illustrated in how we deal with our children today.

In 1970, almost 200,000 American children were taking stimulant drugs. An estimated 6 million children are being prescribed stimulants and millions more are taking other psychotropic drugs such as the anti-depressants Zoloft and Paxil and the anti-psychotics Thorazine and Zyprexa. Jessica Vascallero reports in the July 2 Boston Globe that about 11 million children took prescription drugs for mental health in 2002, and the number is rising. That would be close to a 5,000 percent increase since 1970.

Many think the drugs represent a benevolent medical response to our hordes of mentally ill children. Others like myself consider the practice a disgrace, a form of institutionalized child abuse. Regardless of one's opinion, here are two significant facts:

1. No children's behavioral problem routinely seen by a psychiatrist or other physician has been scientifically demonstrated to be of biological or genetic causation. There is no objective test, no confirmatory physical or chemical abnormality for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, or any of the other childhood diagnoses popular among psychiatrists.

These diagnoses are wholly subjective, based on judgments of what is and isn't normal behavior.

2. These drugs are dangerous, toxic and can be lethal. There were 186 Ritalin-related heart deaths reported to the FDA during the 1990s.

Because the system of reporting is voluntary, experts believe that this figure represents only 1-10 percent of the actual number of deaths. From just this drug, during a ten-year period, there were 1,800 to 18,000 deaths.

In addition, because of evidence indicating their potential for inducing suicidal thinking and behavior in children.

That over 10 million of our nation's children are on these drugs is intensely disturbing. That parents are being coerced, threatened and forced to drug their children is no less troubling.

This helps explain why it was necessary for the 2003 Texas legislature to pass House Bills 1406 and 320 prohibiting schools and CPS employees, respectively, from pressuring parents to drug their children. Many other states have enacted similar legislation.

Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Child Medication Safety Act by a vote of 425-1. This act would make it unlawful for a school to force children to take psychotropic drugs as a condition of attending school. The bill has been held up in the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee all year. The chair of the committee is Judd Gregg, and according to the Boston Globe article mentioned above, it is Senator Edward Kennedy who is responsible for committee\'s failure to act.

I am absolutely appalled that the National Association of School Psychologists is trying to kill the bill. The association's lobbyist, Libby Nealis, says, “It would deter schools from discussing crucial mental health information with parents” This is nonsense. All the law says is that drugs cannot be required as a condition of attending school.

Incredibly enough, promoters of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry are not satisfied with drugging 15-20 percent of our nation's children.

As Jeanne Lenzer reports in the June 19 th 2005 issue of the British Medical Journal, President Bush's New Freedom Commission (NFC) plans an initiative to screen for possible “mental illness” all 52 million children and 6 million adults in our nation's public schools.