URGENT ACTION AND EMAILS NEEDED! PRESCHOOLERS AT RISK!

Dear Friends,
We have alarming news; Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I), announced
legislation Monday that would funnel $250 million to create a federal
program that will get child care and preschool operators to identify and
treat children under age 5 with mental health programs.  The name of the
legislation is “The Foundation for Learning Act.”  There is currently an
attempt to tag this legislation onto the education bill that has passed
both the U.S. Senate and the House and is just waiting to go through a
conference committee before becoming a law. There is urgency here, as the
education bill could go through committee very soon.   If this legislation
is successfully tagged onto the education bill, this "early intervention"
treatment program for preschoolers will simply open the door for the mental
health industry to target young children as future mental patients.
According to Kennedy, "I'm amazed we're living in the 21st century and
mental health care is looked upon as being soft science and somehow not
legitimate."


The truth is that mental health is not just “soft science,” it is 100%
junk science and millions of children are currently tagged with these
unscientific labels and subsequently subjected to mind altering drugs—which
has already created a situation of growing alarm and national controversy.  
The idea of subjecting children less than 5 years of age to being targeted
for mental health services and treatments is extremely alarming.  Consider
the“legitimacy”of mental disorders:
·        California psychiatrist Al Parides remarked that the American
Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), which
lists disorders psychiatry considers "legitimate" is actually "a
masterpiece of political maneuvering."  
"...What they have done is medicalize many problems that don't have a
demonstratable, biological cause."

· Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of
New York and the author of more than 24 books says that
“The designation ‘disease’ can only be justified when the cause can be
related to a demonstrable anatomical lesion, infection, or some other
physiological defect. As there is no such evidence for any mental disorder,
the term disease is a misnomer; in fact, it is fraudulent.”

·        The U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment Report of 1992
states,
“Research has yet to identify specific biological causes for any of these
[mental] disorders….Mental disorders are classified on the basis of
symptoms because there are as yet no biological markers or laboratory tests
for them.”

·        In 1996, psychiatrist David Kaisler wrote:
"...modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic
cause of any single mental illness...Patients [have] been diagnosed with
'chemical imbalances' despite the fact that no test exists to support such
a claim, and... there is no real conception of what a correct chemical
balance would look like.

…“Yet conclusions such as ‘depression is a chemical imbalance’ are
created out of nothing more than semantics and the wishful thinking of
scientist/psychiatrists and a public who will believe anything now that has
the stamp of approval of medical science.”

·        New York Psychiatrist Ron Leifer stated:

"There's no biological imbalance.  When people come to me and say, 'I have
a biochemical imbalance,' I say, 'Show me your lab tests.'  There are no
lab tests. So what's the biochemical imbalance?"

·        A psychologist who witnessed the process of how “disorders” come
to be included in Psychiatry’s DSM (and thereby gain legitimacy as mental
disorders) was quoted in Time magazine as saying, “The low level of
intellectual effort was shocking, Diagnoses were developed by majority vote
on the level we would use to choose a restaurant. You feel like Italian, I
feel like Chinese, so let’s go to the cafeteria. Then it’s typed into the
computer. It may reflect on our naiveté, but it was our belief that there
would be an attempt to look at things scientifically.”

By identifying “at risk” children, this proposed program opens the door to
children being labeled "mentally disabled" by a variety of unscientific and
unproven psychiatric disorders, thereby making them "eligible" for mental
health services and treatments.
These “treatments” sounded off a national alarm in February 2000, when The
Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) released a startling report
that found over a five-year period, from 1991 to 1995, the number of
stimulant prescriptions written for preschoolers (ages 2 to 4) increased
twofold to threefold.  An increase of 200% to 300%.    This report garnered
national and international media coverage, nearly all expressing concern
that young children and toddlers were being labeled with psychiatric
disorders and prescribed powerful psychiatric drugs.

The "Foundations for Learning Act" being promoted by Rep Patrick Kennedy is
specifically aimed at preschoolers, and would simply open the door to more
young children being at risk of getting tagged with psychiatric labels and
subjected to mind altering psychiatric drugs.
Millions of children are already being stigmatized with these unproven and
unscientific “mental disorders.”  This “early intervention” program must
not be passed – particularly in light of the current controversy regarding
the psychiatric labeling of children that has resulted in over 6 million
U.S. children currently on psychiatric drugs.  The sponsors of this
legislation include the National Mental Health Association, the National
Head Start Association and the American Psychological Association
We urge you to email or fax your concerns regarding this program to the
following individuals alerting them to this situation, and urging them to
not pass this Foundations for Learning Act as part of the current education
bill:

Speaker of the House;  Congressman Dennis Hastert – email:  
[email protected]
Or Fax: 202-225-0697
House Majority Whip; Congressman Tom Delay  - go to website at
http://majoritywhip.house.gov
And click on upper right corner “contact the Whip” – send your email from
here.
Or Fax: 202-225-5241
Congressman John Boehner; Chairman of the House Education and Workforce
Committee
Email:  [email protected]  Or Fax: 202-202-225-0704