Iowa Activist Takes on TeenScreen

 

Larry Hanus is president of the Iowa Health Freedom Coalition: http://www.iowahealthfreedom.org

Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Beware TeenScreen

WATERLOO --- This fall, Teen Screen is being quietly maneuvered into a dozen Iowa schools. Parents all over the country are finding out that the TeenScreen and the New Freedom Commission's mental screening programs are, in actuality, taxpayer funded, government sanctioned, marketing tools for the benefit of Pharmaceutical companies.

Often without direct parental consent, children undergo controversial, subjective and dubious screening for mental illness. Some of the results have been unwarranted diagnosis, misdiagnosis and the labeling of many children with a mental health disorder. 
 

 These programs are modeled after the Texas mandatory school mental health screenings, instituted under then Gov. George W. Bush and his associates. A recent article in the British Medical Journal stated these programs involve political contributions and kickbacks and profiteering by drug companies at enormous expense to taxpayers.

A lawsuit has just been filed in federal court in Indiana on behalf of the parents of a child, tested without their permission, resulting in their normal daughter being labeled with mental disorders. Iowa's taxpayers may do well to find out what is going on in their schools.

For more information, please go to http://www.teenscreentruth.com/iowa_contact.htm or www.ProgressiveConvergence.com.