TeenScreen

George Orwell was an optimist!
There is a LOT more information out there about TeenScreen.
Psychological questioning at school without parents permission.

http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html

To: School Board Members and State and Federal Legislators
Whereas children as young as 9, who previously had not thought of the
concept of suicide, are being asked invasive and leading questions by
TeenScreen such as: Have you tried to kill yourself in the last year?
Are you still thinking of killing yourself? Have you thought seriously
about killing yourself? Have you often thought about killing yourself?
Have you ever tried to kill yourself?" and kids are being lured into
doing the suicide survey by TeenScreen's offers of free movie passes,
food coupons, pizza parties and $50 mall gift certificates;

Whereas the goal of TeenScreen leaders is to screen every American
child before they graduate from high school;

Whereas TeenScreen is based on the controversial and unscientific
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, written by
psychiatrists with financial ties to drug companies and children
screened by TeenScreen are not given valid medical testing such as
brain scans, blood test, urine tests, X-Rays or any other valid medical
tests to detect evidence of any possible physical abnormality that may
be contributing to certain behavior;

Whereas, according to TeenScreen psychiatrist David Shaffer, mental
disorders in the DSM were developed by psychiatrists "shouting out
their opinions from all sides of the room and whoever shouted loudest
tended to be heard. My own impression, coming straight from England,
was it was more like a tobacco auction than a sort of conference." and
according to Shaffer, TeenScreen "... does identify a whole bunch of
kids who aren't really suicidal, so you get a lot of false-positives.
And that means if you're running a large program at a school,
you're going to cripple the program because you're going to have
too many kids you have to do something about";

Whereas TeenScreen has screened children across the nation without
written parental consent in violation of federal law and state laws and
has screened children across the nation without fully informed consent
and did not warn parents that after taking the TeenScreen suicide
survey, certain children have been and will be labeled with false
mental disorders, based upon the unscientific DSM and the "chemical
imbalance of the brain" theory, which relies solely upon observation
and for which no scientific or medical test exists;

Whereas a federal lawsuit has been filed against a school and
psychiatric facility by the Rutherford Institute on behalf of parents
who did not give permission for their child to be subjected to the
TeenScreen suicide survey which resulted in a false diagnosis of a
mental disorder;

Whereas an epidemic already exists with children using psychiatric
drugs and will further skyrocket if children are referred to
psychiatrists after screening. According to a survey of recently
trained child psychiatrists it was found that treatment for 9 out of 10
children consisted of prescription drugs. (Journal of the American
Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry 2002);

Whereas TeenScreen's leaders and advisory board members have ties to
pharmaceutical companies and front groups for pharmaceutical companies;


Whereas antipsychotic drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug
Administration for children; the FDA's "black box warning" states
antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in
children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders; and drug safety
experts have recommended additional "black box" warnings be placed on
ADHD drugs: for the increased risk of stroke and heart attack;

Whereas potential recruits are ineligible for military service if they
have taken Ritalin and other stimulants to treat the unscientific
"disorder" called ADHD in the previous year;

Whereas most states have laws restricting the purchase of firearms
based on an adjudication of mental illnesses or disorders, and mass
screening of all American children for mental disorders will increase
the number of persons labeled with a mental disorder, directly
infringing upon the citizenry's right to keep and bear arms as
guaranteed by the 2nd amendment;

Whereas TeenScreen only partners with and seeks to immediately refer
students to "mental illness" practitioners and does not refer students
to medical disciplines that could test for underlying health problems
such as allergies, nutrition, toxicities and physical illnesses;

Whereas child suicides are very rare and have been on a decline for
years; and even according to former TeenScreen director Rob Caruano,
"suicides are so rare that you'd have to screen the whole country to
see a difference in mortality between screened and unscreened
students.";

Whereas many and various groups, individuals and legislators across a
spectrum of political, religious, scientific and common sense views are
opposed to screening for mental disorders in schools;

Whereas TeenScreen is very secretive about their suicide survey and
refuses to allow parents to obtain a copy and is also very secretive
about which schools they've convinced to use their suicide survey;

Whereas the United States Preventive Services Task Force reported in
May of 2004:
There is no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide
attempts or mortality,
There is limited evidence on the accuracy of screening tools to
identify suicide risk,
There is insufficient evidence that treatment of those at high risk
reduces suicide attempts or mortality;

Whereas Ned Calonge, the chairman of the United States Preventive
Services Task Force, who is also the chief medical officer for the
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, was quoted in the
June 16, 2006 Washington Post: "the panel would reach the same
conclusion today... Whether or not we like to admit it, there are no
interventions that have no harms... There is weak evidence that
screening can distinguish people who will commit suicide from those who
will not... And screening inevitably leads to treating some people who
do not need it. Such interventions have consequences beyond side
effects from drugs or other treatments... Unnecessary care drives up
the cost of insurance, causing some people to lose coverage
altogether.";

Whereas TeenScreen is an intrusion into the rearing of children and
false psychiatric labels could embarrass students and cause turmoil at
home;

Whereas many school districts have reservations about using TeenScreen
because of liability and risk issues;

Whereas legislators in various states are proposing legislation to stop
state and federal funding for screening of mental disorders in schools;


Whereas schools should be in the business of educating our children
instead of probing each for unscientific mental disorders;

We, therefore, petition school board members and state and federal
legislators to stop using the TeenScreen suicide survey and to adopt
firm policy that will prevent the implementation of TeenScreen in the
future.


Sincerely,

The Undersigned

TeenScreen is a deploreable invasion of privacy. I guess privacy is
only important when a teenager wants to murder a fetus.