Selling Suicide

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http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2006/07/29/the_selling_o\

f_suicide_for_profit

thepeoplesvoice.org

The Selling of Suicide for Profit

Jeanyne Wanner

07/29/06

A child's suicide; an un-imaginable tragedy to any parent whose life and love is

so invested in that child! What greater, more disturbing fear could there be

than to consider that one's child would deliberately take his or her own life?

Such terrible sadness, what senseless waste; what an opportunity for the

psychiatric community!

Though this remark would seem to fly in the teeth of everything compassionate

and feeling, not to mention civil, it is nevertheless true. The suicides of this

country's children are being promoted and used to convince and coerce parents

fearful for their child's life that only psychiatry and pills can detect and

save their children from the likelihood of a self-inflicted demise.

Yes, this is a shocking statement and one that is, no doubt, either

uncomfortable or provoking to think about. But, if we care about our children

and their futures we must face the rather distasteful truth that all is not as

it appears with the reigning proponents of mental health and " suicide

screening. "

What these proponents suggest and what they seek to implement with programs such

as TeenScreen, as a solution to suicide, could be the very demise of those they

would purport to help.

In the field of medicine and pharmaceuticals there is a term known as Disease

Mongering - the medicalizing of normal conditions into " diseases " for what many

scientists agree are questionable motives by the pharmaceutical companies. In an

April 11, 2006 article by UPI Senior Medical Correspondent Steve , he

reported, " The trend, which is dubbed " disease mongering " by the experts, " turns

healthy people into patients, wastes precious resources, and causes iatrogenic

[caused by medical examination or treatment] harm, "

If we segue to the field of mental health, we will see that not only is this

practice seen, it is the norm. None of the over 370 " Mental disorders " carefully

detailed in the diagnostic and statistical manual of psychiatry has any basis in

science or fact. These " disorders " are just categories of symptoms, voted on and

given a name so as to label individuals and bill insurance companies.

Yet, these psychiatric proponents of screening would have us believe that the

reason our children might eventually commit suicide is because they are

afflicted with one or more of these " disorders " which can then be " detected " by

screening, and which, according to pharmaceutical psychiatry, most every one, is

a result of a biochemical imbalance in the brain. This theory is completely

unproven. Even the US Preventative Special Task Force found, in 2004 " no

evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality. "

In a recent interview with neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman he made the point that.

" Not one case report of one [mental] disease was validated - not one. " . " What

they do is they meet at the American Psychiatric Association, they meet in the

DSM Committee and vote on making new behavioral and emotional disorders, and

they vote and then they start immediately calling them diseases - total fraud! "

The website for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, reported

in 2004, " The overall rate of suicide among youth has declined slowly since

1992. "

According to TeenScreen's website, which relates figures from the National

Survey on Drug Use and Health, approximately 900,000 youths aged 12-19 made a

plan to commit suicide during their worst or most recent episode of major

depression and 712,000 acted upon it.

Actual national suicide figures for children 12-19 for 2003 was a total of 1707

deaths out of over 33 Million children in that age group. That is approximately

5.13 per hundred thousand children or .000513 percent. Even former director of

TeenScreen, Rob Caruano stated: " suicides are so rare that you'd have to screen

the whole country to see a difference in mortality between screened and

unscreened students. " In actuality your child has 100x better chance of

contracting a rare disease than committing suicide. Terrible though these

suicide figures are they are a far cry from the epidemic that is being promoted

by these psychiatric screening proponents.

What you will not see on the TeenScreen website is that " of the over 15,000

children who were admitted to the hospital for drug related suicide attempts,

over 40% were on psychotropic medication. " Strange that this was not mentioned

as this was on the same website as the other information. In addition, in

Florida over 50% of the child suicides since 2001 were found to be on

psychotropic medication or already under psychiatric care. Not exactly what

you'd want to put on the front cover of your brochure.

So what does this mean? Though any number of suicides of children are shocking,

the corollary that the psychiatric community is making - i.e. that all of these

children have a mental disorder - for example, major depressive disorder or

bi-polar - is just bad science and a slap in the face of conscientious

observation.

Dr. Cohen, Professor of Social Work at Florida International University,

is quoted in an article in April of 2006 as saying, " Unless one has been living

in a cave the past 20 years, one knows that youth with psychological/ behavioral

learning problems are likely to be referred for psychotropic medications. If

this is so it should, in effect be considered to be one of the major " purposes "

of youth screening. " . " Encouraging screening as presently constituted simply

encourages children to be put on medications - with no idea what this will do to

the suicide rate, and with some indications that it could " increase " suicide. "

This is not to say that children do not get depressed. It happens to everyone at

some time or another. There are generally identifiable reasons however, which

have nothing to do with the chemical reactions in their brains. Whether those

reasons stem from hopelessness, loss, medical difficulties or just the human

condition, pretending understanding where there is none is just an arrogant

betrayal of man. If we take the recent example of farmers in India's Andra

Paradesh State who, in the last 6 years over 3000 of them, have committed

suicide under the crush of insurmountable debt, do we conclude without at least

a nod in recognition of their plight, that they all had " mental illnesses? "

Would we actually think that the correct solution is let's drug them so they

aren't bothered by their situation, or would we seek to fix the deplorable

conditions which have driven them to this outcome? If the tire were flat why

would we kick the tail pipe?

In such a way we must consider the source of our children's upsets as palpable,

real conditions that are unique to each child and that cannot be diagnosed, or

even determined by their filling out a canned, invasive and divisive survey

designed with the particular goal of creating a " patient for life " for the

psychiatric and pharmaceutical community.

From the TeenScreen Questionnaire.

Has there been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just weren't

interested in anything?

Has there been a time when you felt you couldn't do anything well or that you

weren't as good-looking or as smart as other people?

How often did your parents get annoyed or upset with you because of the way you

were feeling or acting?

Have you often felt very nervous when you've had to do things in front of

people?

Have you often worried a lot before you were going to play a sport or game or do

some other activity?

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?

Food for thought for your 12 year old!

Not surprisingly, TeenScreen and it's supporters - after being exposed for their

true intentions - are now trying to distance themselves from the inevitable

outcome that will result from children who are found to be " at risk " from a

mental disorder - that of psychiatric evaluation and more often than not, a

label and a prescription.

TeenScreen's director, McGuire recently stated, " The program (TeenScreen)

is not affiliated with or funded by pharmaceutical companies. " And " does not

involve treatment and does not recommend or endorse any particular kind of

treatment for the youth who are identified as at risk by the screening. "

Her Co-director, Laurie Flynn, in direct opposition to Ms. McGuire's

pronouncement stated " Treatment is the long term goal for TeenScreen. "

Interesting, in that according to the Journal of the American Academy of Child

Psychiatry in 2002, a survey of recently trained child psychiatrists found the

treatment for 9 out of 10 children consisted of drugging.

Couple this with the knowledge that Ms. Flynn was the former director of the

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a psychiatric/pharmaceutical front

group. NAMI received millions of dollars in funding from various pharmaceutical

companies during Flynn's tenure. These funds were to promote the validity and

acceptability of " mental illnesses, " and forward and reward the " concerns " of

its patrons, the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries. Their denial of this

incestuous relationship and their agenda to medicate our children is

preposterous.

Perhaps TeenScreen is trying to distance themselves from their pharmaceutical

connections because they realize they need to be more guarded of their

" alliances. " This will be a difficult task for them however as TeenScreen, from

its inception was developed by psychiatrist Shaffer who is a consultant

and apologist of pharmaceutical companies. Shaffer has served as an expert

witness for various drug companies and as a consultant on various psychotropic

drugs.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) sent out a press release

on May 8, 2000, that said Shaffer was their president and they had just released

a national survey they had done on suicide. The funder of the survey? Pfizer,

Inc. Shaffer's AFSP has also received $1,250,000 from Solvay Pharmaceuticals,

Inc. (http://www.psychsearch.net/advisors.html)

Though the goal of screening may sound admirable, its actual intent is a wolf in

sheep's clothing, skulking around, preying on the sympathies of concerned

parents and legislators, despite the outcries of the thousands who have been

harmed or who recognize in psychiatry's duplicitous methods the terrible threat

not only to the children of this country but to all of our individual freedoms.

Right now there are plans afoot by proponents of mental health screening to

screen everyone in the country. President Bush's New Freedom Commission on

Mental Health has opened the door for psychiatry to now spread to all sectors of

our society. This includes seniors, school children, and pregnant and new

mothers. Even babies and toddlers are now being drugged and are targeted as the

up-and-coming group of potential patients. Tell me, just how does one determine

if a baby is depressed?

Is this to be the fate of our citizenry, checking in routinely for mental health

" exams " which will adjudicate our need for medication? Is this what we want for

our children? Are we so scared by all the propaganda that our children will kill

themselves without intervention by psychiatry that we would subject them to such

ridiculous, ineffective and even dangerous programs such as TeenScreen?

Look at the FDA Black Box warnings that are prevalent on many psychotropic

medications. They caution against risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in

children and adolescents but are used as " treatment " for depression and

suicidiality. Find out about the many high profile school shootings and the

suicides by children already under psychiatric care or on psychotropic

medication. Examine the deaths from heart failure and other medical causes from

these drugs, not to mention the mental effects. Is this fraudulent practice to

be regarded as the " savior " of our children?

Beyond the obvious goal of billions of dollars into psychiatric and

pharmaceutical coffers - 3.3 billion dollars realized on Zoloft sales alone in

2005 - will we see a society where the continued labeling and fraudulent

" diagnosing " of our children by unscientific means will be the catalyst by which

their rights and personal freedoms will be usurped? Will this medicated

homogenizing of all of our children's singular gifts for the spurious purpose of

" protecting " them result in children with less thoughts of suicide? Or will we

label and medicate our future's brightest hopes for no more reason than they

were unfortunate enough to wrongly answer their survey? Yes, even psychiatrist

Shaffer stated that TeenScreen " does identify a whole bunch of kids who

aren't really suicidal, so you get a lot of false-positives. " (84%).

If the billions of dollars that are now spent by US taxpayers to medicate our

country's children, were funneled into workable programs instead of medications,

would we be more likely to effect real changes for the better? If our focus was

centered more on educational or social activities and programs which fostered

communication, compassion for abused or neglected children, productive ideals,

and which promoted an understanding of life's worth and capabilities, would we

not see changes in our children which would spread into the future like an ever

widening road, instead of the dead end path upon which we have now set so many

children?

No one can say why one child will commit suicide and not another. Life is not a

predictable activity and people's viewpoints of life are as varied as the people

that possess them. Who's to say that by locating a particular set of feelings in

a child that that child will be at risk or not? Life cannot be distilled down to

such predictable uniformity. Perhaps the best we can do is to provide a caring

environment that nurtures our children's goals and offer a supportive shoulder

for their concerns and troubles. Perhaps the worst we can do is to take from

them their right to best their own demons and in so doing condemn them to lives

as victims of every pharmaceutically contrived chemical reaction that will

course in their brains.

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Jeanyne Wanner is a freelance writer and activist living in Florida

jeanynewanner@...

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