Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness

Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness

“The president’s commission found that ‘despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed’ and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for ‘consumers of all ages,’ including preschool children.”
– British Medical Journal

Can you believe this?
Who’s going to do the screening?
What are the criteria?
Would you trust a psychiatrist to make that judgment about you or your family?
What if you disagree? Will they force you to take the drugs?

My opinion:

Let’s get real here. This program is designed to do one thing: Sell more psychiatric drugs.

It will also have the effect of dumbing-down America to yet another lower notch.

People on psychiatric drugs have a lowered I.Q. and an impaired ability to study. Job performance will suffer. Productivity will decline.

Since people on drugs have a lowered sense of responsibility for their actions, criminality will increase.

The drug model is bogus, and it is not the solution to the real problem. In fact, it will cause more problems because it is not a real solution.

Instead, people with “mental disorders” need:

1. Very thorough medical examinations and laboratory testing to find out whether they are deficient in any vital nutrient or have some environmental poison in their bodies. For example, we know that people with B vitamin deficiencies, hormone deficiencies, or high levels of heavy metals like cadmium or arsenic will not function well.
2. Examinations to determine if they have displaced or broken bones. Abnormal behavior may be caused by chronic suppressed pain stemming from bone problems. Basically, the causes for abnormal behavior must be searched for very carefully and corrected through good medical care.
3. Examinations into social, relational, and situational causes. People with “mental disorders” may really just be having problems with another person or situation that has caused the feelings they are feeling. Practical coaching on how to solve this can be done so that the situation actually gets resolved.

Psychiatric drugs NEVER handle 1-3. All they do is diminish the ability to perceive by either numbing one’s responses or by chemically altering one’s senses. People on medicated drugs always get a distorted view of their environment and further lose the ability to communicate with it.

This is dangerous medicine!

Patients will worsen.

Why? Because the cause of the problem is still unresolved. Additionally, since these drugs have major side effects, individuals will now have the added problems of the drugs’ toxic effects.

If you take time to actually look at someone on psychiatric medication (and if you’re not under the influence of any drugs yourself!), you will see the blank stare and “not-there-ness” of a person who is floating — about two seconds behind present time — in a drug haze.

Are we going to screen all Americans so they can have this done to them?

I believe the goal of the president’s committee members (whom I suspect are on the dole in some way from the pharmaceutical industry) is to increase the sales of psychiatric drugs. The current targets of young women, children, and the elderly will be greatly expanded.

As a physician, and a human being, I disagree.

This will not be good for us as individuals or for us as a society. It paves the way for an elite group to declare: “Mental illness is everywhere, and we the government will decide who is sane or not and medicate those who disagree.”

That would be a very difficult society to live in. I don’t want that for me or for you.
– D.I. Minkoff, MD

"Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness" — by
Jeanne Lenzer

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