The Pros And Cons Of Mental Health

A mental illness is “a condition that impacts a person 's thinking, feeling or mood and may affect his or her ability to relate to others and function on a daily basis” (www.nami.org). During a school year about 52 million students and 6 million adults working inside schools will be asked to take a mental health screening to be tested for a mental illness and with these mental health screenings they are often performed without parental knowledge or consent and can lead to dangerous childhood medication use and multiple misdiagnosis’s that cause pain and suffering to those who were misdiagnosed with a mental illness. With this being said we need to put a stop to misdiagnosis’s and childhood medication by stopping mental health screenings in

Paul also stated that “according to Medco Health Solutions, more than 2.2 million children are receiving more than one psychotropic drug at a time. In fact, according to Medico Trends, in 2003, total spending on psychiatric drugs for children exceeded spending on antibiotics or asthma medication”. For any concerned parents that object to having their children forcibly medicated can be charged with child abuse. Take the case of Maryanne Godboldo, for instance. Maryanne’s 13-year-old daughter was taking Risperdal, (which is a neuroleptic antipsychotic medication that has multiple hazardous side effects) after being told from a mental health screening that was done at her school. When Maryanne noticed that the medication was making her daughter’s condition worse, she decided to take advantage of alternate treatment options. When doing this Child Protective Services (CPS) came and charged Maryanne with medical neglect. Child Protective Services then took custody of Maryanne’s daughter after a 12-hour stand-off in which CPS then enlisted the help of a police SWAT team (http://www.eagleforum.org). This situation could have been avoided if mental health screenings were not permitted in schools. Mental health screenings lead to pain and suffering not only for the child but for

“At a Colorado homeless shelter, 50 percent of the 350 young people given the TeenScreen were found to be suicidal risks, and 71 percent screened positive for psychiatric disorders. Although such youngsters are certainly suffering from residential and social instability, and probably from not eating or sleeping properly, the TeenScreen diagnoses lead to medications instead of appropriate interventions”. Take the case of 13-year-old, Aliah Gleason. Aliah class was screened for mental illness, and after the screening, her parents were told that Aliah needed further evaluation due to scoring high on a suicidal rating. Aliah was then referred to a university consulting psychiatrist, and therefore to an emergency clinic. Six weeks later, a child protection worker appeared at her school, interviewed her, and then summoned her father to the school. They ordered him to take Aliah to Austin State (psychiatric) Hospital. When Aliah’s dad refused Aliah was rushed into emergency custody and had to have a police officer drive her to the hospital. During the five months Aliah was in the hospital she was not allowed to speak or see her parents and she was placed in restraints more than 26 times and was given at least 12 different psychiatric medications, many of them simultaneously. Despite the caretakers’ uncertainty about her diagnosis and if she even had a psychiatric illness to begin with, Aliah’s parents