OpEdNews.com
May 14, 2006
THE PRESIDENT’S NEW FREEDOM COMMISSION ON MENTAL HEALTH
The Plan to Drug American School Children
by George Stone
The Plan to Drug American School Children
by George Stone
(Note: George Stone has a master's degrees in anthropology and social work. He is a licensed clinical social worker with 35 years experience in therapy and supervision specializing in family & brief therapy and has practiced privately and publicly with patients ranging from poor to middle class, with urban and rural families, and with Black, Hispanic, White, Asian American, Native American and Alaska Native families. He is dedicated to keeping families together by helping them solve their own problems without using psychiatric medication or hospitalization, and to returning children home if they are in psychiatric custody.)
MEDICALIZATION: Convincing Healthy People They Are Sick
This paper outlines the deliberate marketing of harmful drugs to children as a direct result of the drug industry take over of the American mental health system. My point of departure is Ivan Illich’s broader assertion that “The medical system has become a major threat to health.” (1976) Time has proven Illich to be a prophet: medicine is now the leading cause of death in America. (Null 2005) What is wrong in American medicine is also wrong in psychiatry. Pharma marketeers claim psychiatric drug treatment is a scientific miracle. However, the outcome evidence on psychiatric treatment shows otherwise: the recovery rate for treated schizophrenia has fallen from 70% in the mid-nineteenth century to 11% today, while the death rate for the “new” atypical antipsychotic drugs is double that of the older typical class. These outcomes contrast with 49-51% recovery Third World countries, like India and Nigeria, where these drugs are not used consistently. (Whitaker 2004) The suicide rate for treated schizophrenia in the UK has increased 20 fold since the introduction of antipsychotic drugs in 1954. (Healy et al 2006) Five times as many people are being defined as permanently mentally ill (disabled) today than before the introduction of drug treatment. (Whitaker 2005) Yet, inspite of these ominous facts, millions of American children are routinely being given these dangerous drugs.
How did this happen?
The drugging of American children is not accidental. It is a part of the larger problem of the premeditated medicalization of modern life discussed by Illich (1976), McKnight (1999) and others. However, the issue goes beyond the use of drugs: it is about freedom. The massive pharmaceutical corporations, which barely existed before World War II, are the most profitable legal businesses in human history. They have the money, the plan and the ruthless determination to medicalize our lives to sell us as many drugs as possible. They are a major threat to the basic human rights, as well as the health, of every person on the planet.
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