Mandatory Mental Health Screening

Critics See Drug Industry Behind Mental Health Plan 

RITT GOLDSTEIN / Inter Press Service (Italy) 20oct04

STOCKHOLM - 'Bush Plans to Screen Whole U.S. Population for Mental Illness', read the headline in the 'British Medical Journal' (BMJ) and the project, with increasingly controversial drug treatment at its core, is underway as you read this.

Structures to put the scheme in place have been developed under a so-called "Federal Action Agenda," announced in Washington on Jun. 9, and include mandatory mental health screening, which the plan recommends be linked with "treatment and supports".

The plan's full details have yet to emerge as the Action Agenda still "has not been publicly released," according to A Kathryn Power, director of the Centre for Mental Health Services (CMHS), the Bush administration body spearheading the effort.

Developed by the President's New Freedom Commission On Mental Health, the effort, critics charge, is a pharmaceutical industry marketing scheme to mine customers and promote sales of the newest, most expensive psychiatric medications.

Under 'New Freedom', mental health screening of adult Americans is slated to occur during routine physical exams while that of young people will occur in the school system. Pre-school children will receive periodic "development screens."

source: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=25904 21oct04