U.S. OFFERS BLUEPRINT TO AID CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH
By Judith Graham
Tribune Staff Writer
January 3, 2001
In a blistering report, the U.S. surgeon
general on Wednesday said growing
numbers of emotionally disturbed children
and teenagers are "suffering
needlessly" because mental health services
are inadequate and many
institutions designed to help them are
ineffective.
The first-of-its-kind study, the latest
effort by the Clinton administration
to reinvigorate public interest in mental
health issues, highlights the
extent of mental illness in the young as
well as the extent of neglect.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Leaving no doubt that the federal
government spearheads the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness/disease,
in the schools and in all children everywhere]
One in every 10 children is impaired by
emotional disturbances, the study said,
but less than 20 percent of those who need
help get it.
As a result, millions of children
experience problems in school,
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
The main problem they suffer from in the
schools is that they are assaulted with whole language reading
methodology/ideology which, far from teaching them to read, making them
literate/educable, assures that the stay illiterate, uneducable and ever more
frustrated and unhappyfodder for psychology, psychiatry and psychiatric
drugging]
delays in development
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Here they pervert science saying that developmental delays
(neurological, they imply) can result from denying them psychiatric diagnosis
(never scientifically based) and psychiatric treatment (always one
dimensional, with brain-damaging drugs). Brain damaging drugs truly cause
brain damage and true, and sometime irreversible developmental delay. No
psychiatric drug is a scientifically based treatment for a proven physical or
chemical abnormality (disease) in the brain or body]
or other setbacks that can
affect their ability to grow into
happy, productive adults, the report says.
The study comes as legislatures across the
country reconvene to address
budget and policy concerns, and during the
waning days of a Clinton
presidency that has sought to make
childrens' health issues a priority.
The surgeon general's report suggests
actions that could become a blueprint
for improving mental health care for young
people: more training in
recognizing early warning signs for
doctors, teachers, and school
counselors; better information on
effective treatments; more emphasis on
prevention; better coordination among
programs; and, most important, a
sustained public effort to dispel the
stigma that prevents many families
from reaching out for assistance.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
The Surgeon General, in a late-1999
report on mental health equated all psychiatric disorders with medical
diseases such as diabetes, and psychiatric drugs with true pharmacologic,
medical treatments such as insulin. He did so with full knowledge that not a
single psychiatric disorder is know to be a bona fide disease having a
confirming, diagnosable physical or chemical abnormality within the child.
This being the case, there is no known abnormality to make normal or more
nearly normal as with insulin for diabetes and with all medical and surgical
diseases. Surgeon General Satchers having so mislead the public with that
report, I urged, early in 2000, that he resign. His continued pitch that one
and all, especially in the schools, become mental health
diagnosticians/labelers make him a pusher of drugsdrugs from the
psychopharmaceutical cartel that are legal but shouldnt be.]
Tipper Gore, the vice president's wife,
helped mobilize the Clinton
administration around mental health issues
after admitting she suffered
depression when her son was badly injured
in a car accident about 10 years
ago.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
and this makes her an expert]
Just this week the federal government,
acting on an executive order from the
president, began offering employees
improved mental health benefits.
Surgeon General David Satcher noted that
"children are suffering
disproportionately--far more that
adults--in terms of undiagnosed and
untreated mental health problems."
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Satcher doesnt let up. His ties to
the pharmaceutical industry, past, present and in the foreseeable future must
be scrutinized]
He added that "despite our efforts, we
haven't made any real progress in 20
to 30 years. ... People still don't seek
the help their kids need, and the
social environment is still not conducive
to getting that help."
Satcher said the greatest personal
surprise was the scope of the issue.
Emotional and behavioral problems affect
more children than any kind of
health concern, according to research
cited at a September conference
convened by his office.
While mental health practitioners have
long sounded similar themes, the
decision of the nation's public health
chief to highlight the concerns is
unprecedented--as was Satcher's earlier
focus on suicide and mental health
for the overall population.
The new report is a collaboration among
three federal
departments--Education, Justice, and
Health and Human Services--underscoring
how mental health problems tend to spill
into many areas.
Satcher's efforts on behalf of mentally
ill children also resonate with
efforts being undertaken by other federal
agencies. The Food and Drug
Administration recently required
drugmakers to test medications on children
so side effects and long-term impacts can
be better understood, and the
National Institute of Mental Health has
stepped up funding for research on
treatments for children and adolescents.
The attention to child emotional
disturbances is long overdue, said
Kimberly
Hoagwood, associate director for child and
adolescent research at NIMH.
"Children's mental health care research
has lagged badly; it's about 20
years behind what we know about adult
mental health care," she said.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
With 5 million US schoolchildren on
Ritalin/amphetamine for the fraudulent disease ADHD and another 2.5 million on
other brain-damaging psychiatric drugs for other fraudulent psychiatric
diseasesthis coming to 15% of the nations children, consuming 90% of the
worlds supply of Ritalin and other of the addictive, Schedule II, controlled
psychostimulants--they claim we are lagging badly behind. Heaven help the
children. We and our federal government are doing this to our very own
children. We are doing this to our very own futures]
"But at long last, we are coming into our own."
In academic terms, that means an explosion
of knowledge about how to
diagnose and treat child mental health
problems over the past decade. Now,
early symptoms have been pinpointed and
effective treatments have been
identified in many cases.
In practice, much of this research hasn't
made it beyond academia.
Relatively few therapists treating teens
have formal training in new
therapies that have been shown to help
depressed teens, part of a wide and
persistent gap between research and
practice.
Still, many professionals and parents are
concerned that some childhood
conditions, such as attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder, may be
overdiagnosed and inappropriately treated
with medication. Yet there is also
concern about underdiagnosis and the
prevalence of treatments that haven't
been proved effective.
The new report offers many suggestions,
including encouraging professional
schools and organizations to teach
doctors, nurses, teachers, social
workers, day-care providers and probation
officers about new research
findings in children's mental health,
especially so they can pick up early
warning signs of significant problems and
make appropriate referrals.
Better systems for identifying emerging
emotional problems also need to be
developed, the report suggests. "What we
really need is to make this part of
any regular evaluation--whether medical or
otherwise--of how a kid is
growing and developing," said Dr. Rex
Cowdry, medical director of the
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
The surgeon general's report suggests the
need for a universal measurement
system for child mental health that would
identify children with problems,
track their progress during treatment and
document how patients fared after
treatment ended.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Such is their plan for a takeover of the public schools
of the nation. At the same time they urge limits on parents who would save
their children by extracting them from this harms way and homeschooling them.
Until parents are hit between the eyes by this they think everything is just
fine with public education, there is no reason for alternatives that would
weaken it as would come through choice and vouchers.]
An alliance between schools and mental
health agencies appears to be part of
the solution. In Chicago, the public
schools are implementing a curriculum
in "social and emotional learning" to
teach young people coping skills. The
child and adolescent services division of
the Illinois Office of Mental
Health has targeted collaboration with
schools as its priority, said
clinical director Dr. Peter Nierman, a
child psychiatrist.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
They are a parasite, a cancer on the schools of the nation]
"The challenge of the future is to bring
services whose effectiveness is
grounded in strong scientific evidence
into community settings," he said
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Without political finance reform, power will aggregate increasingly in
the hands of the few and the mightymeaning into the hands of corporate
powerhouses like the psychopharmacological cartel. It is hard to imagine the
drug billions that lubricate the US political process today but surely those
billions are at work because we witness our own federal governmentone day
long ago a government of the people by the people, spearheading a drugging
craze of the nations youth, starting in the cradleyour children,
grandchildren, and mine, that would shame the Medellin, Cali, and Tijuana
cartels and likely all of the Mafia as well. And in as big a shell game as
is psychiatrys diseases and chemical imbalances, General (ret) McCaffrey,
the White House Drug Czarseeing none of this for what it issteps up the
federal governments very own war on drugs]