An alert has come to my attention that should make all of us angry and frightened, especially parents.

You may have heard that President Bush proposed mandatory mental health screening of all American children. When I read that, I dismissed it as a nutty, dangerous idea that couldn't possibly go any further. Frankly, it smacked of a plan from the Nazi era... something that might have been proposed by the infamous Dr. Mengele as a means of identifying those unfit for the Aryan race. It conjured up the images from a sci-fi novel of citizens reporting for regular testing, then receiving the appropriate drugs to eliminate any "inappropriate" thoughts and to re-form them again into placid workers.

I was wrong to dismiss the idea as another nutty trial balloon that would go nowhere. It has gone somewhere. Incredibly, Congress has funded the development of a plan for mandatory mental health screening of all school children. The purpose of this screening will be to determine which children should be prescribed powerful psychiatric drugs.

Of all the insane government actions I've written about, this one just floors me. I thought my expectations of government were so jaded that they couldn't shock me any longer, but this is over the top... pure insanity. It rocks our individual liberties to the core. Mandatory mental health testing means WITHOUT PARENTAL PERMISSION. That alone should be enough to kill the idea. Imagine someone subjecting your child, behind your back, to personal questioning about their thoughts, their lifestyle, influences at home, or their parents' beliefs, and then making a judgment that can result in forcing your child onto drugs and creating a record that can follow the child for a lifetime.

Nevertheless, our Congress... our trusted elected representatives serving only at our whim, have bought the whole damned idea and FUNDED it... provided the money to make it happen. Once funded, such a program will attract all sorts of groups to push and implement it, and to distribute propaganda promoting and praising it. Who else will benefit? Pharmaceutical companies certainly will. If you're at all afraid of the influence of big money on legislation, you have yet another reason to oppose this.

Mental health isn't science in the normal, "provable" sense... it depends on subjective judgments made, hopefully, by qualified professionals, but AT BEST, it's ill-defined and risky... and always controversial, especially with children. We all know that government programs are never well controlled, and always have unintended consequences. We know that, once started, such programs are virtually unstoppable... they take on a bureaucratic life of their own. In a time of deficits and budget crunches, it would be folly for even the most trusting of us to think that such a program would be done with effective safeguards, or that well-trained professionals would be making judgments about our children.

To the point: Representative Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) has introduced legislation, The Parental Consent Act of 2005 (HR 181) to counter this threat. This bill would de-fund the mental health-screening program. The bill currently has 11 co-sponsors, and these sponsors need our help in making sure this insane program is stopped immediately.

A couple of paragraphs from H.R. 181:

The 1999 Surgeon General's report on mental health admitted the serious conflicts in the medical literature regarding the definitions of mental health and mental illness when it said, `In other words, what it means to be mentally healthy is subject to many different interpretations that are rooted in value judgments that may vary across cultures.

The science is challenging because of the ongoing process of development. The normally developing child hardly stays the same long enough to make stable measurements. Adult criteria for illness can be difficult to apply to children and adolescents, when the signs and symptoms of mental disorders are often also the characteristics of normal development.

Downsize DC, a libertarian organization, has provided an easy way for you to write your elected representatives and encourage them to reverse this dangerous insanity. Here is the message, but you may add your own comments to it:

As one of your constituents, I urge you to please add your name to the Parental Consent Act of 2005. This bill prohibits the use of Federal funds for any universal or mandatory mental health-screening program and protects the rights of parents. Sponsors are needed in the U.S. Senate and co-sponsors are needed to join Congressmen Ron Paul and Tom Feeney.

Mandatory Mental Health screening is Big Brother at his absolute worst. It's shameful that it's even being considered, but we have to stop this NOW. Please... do your part... spend a few minutes and add your voice so that Congress will understand that they've gone way too far. We need to yank their chain and remind them that we are not yet mindless slaves.

Again, here is the link to take action.

For more information:
An article by Karen R. Effrem, MD, of Minnesota's Maple River Education Coalition
An article By Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post