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“New Freedom” Mental Health Commission
I’m baffled that this somehow escaped my notice up until now. It seems last year, Bush began making bold moves into institute mandatory mental health screening for all children and school workers. And not just screening, but also mandatory treatment. Of course, the treatments consist of pharmaceutical remedies. You shouldn’t be surprised to find out either that this initiative is backed by the pharmaceutical industry, and is expected to flush out over six million new customers, according to one figure I saw.
In truly Orwellian fashion, the initiative is named: New Freedom Mental Health Commission. When the hell did they stop even trying to hide their nefarious agenda (oh wait, 9/11 - that’s right)? They could have come up with at least a slightly less ridiculous name. Anyway, here is the official .gov website for this commission. And here is the White House section on it. You almost certainly won’t find much good information on it there though. Here are a few other articles I’ve seen on it so far. Some of these are better than others:
- Mental Health Screening in Schools Signals the End of Parental Rights (haha, as if parents had any rights!)
- Bush plans to screen whole U.S. population for mental illness: Sweeping initiative links diagnoses to treatment with specific drugs
- Forced Mental Health Screening For Your Children
- President’s Bogus Mental Health Screening Initiative Is a Thinly Veiled Scam to Boost Pharmaceutical Profits
Maybe I was just in a coma when this hit the headlines, but how in the hell did I not hear about this? It seems like one of the single-most evil insidious things that the government has ever done. How come people aren’t screaming about this and going apeshit? Oh right, cause then they’ll be drugged into submission. But seriously though, does anybody already know about this - specifically what became of it? Most of the resources I’m finding on this are almost a year old. Was the whole thing ash-canned? I hope to God that it was. Cause if this is or has gone through, the situation is at least 10 times worse than I thought it was.
[Found via PsychWatch]
Also put this on the watch list:
One-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a “serious” disorder that significantly disrupted their ability to function day to day, according to the largest and most detailed survey of the nation’s mental health, published yesterday.
Hm, think these are related? The real kicker of the article:
He said he was disappointed to learn from the survey that despite the availability of effective treatments for many mental illnesses, including depression and anxiety, about a third of people in need rely solely on nonprofessional sources such as Internet support groups and spiritual advisers.
“You wouldn’t rely on your priest for treatment if you had breast cancer,” Insel said. “Why would you go to your priest for a major depressive disorder? These are real medical and brain disorders, and they need to be treated that way.”
Guess what that means, folks! PHARMACEUTICALS! You need them, because you’re not smart enough to treat yourself. You choose all the wrong options if left on your own. Just look at their expert testimony if you’re not convinced.
They don’t release reports like this for fun or completely randomly. They are carefully planned and targeted propaganda tactics to push forward an agenda simultaneously on several fronts. This way, when they drug your kids, you won’t be thinking “Well, I never heard about anything like this!” Instead, you’ll be thinking, “Well, I did read that article in the Washington Post about how we’re the most mentally-ill nation in the world - so this only makes sense!”
The fraction of the population treated for mental illness over a 12-month period has grown to 17 percent from 13 percent a decade ago — a sign, perhaps, that advertisements for antidepressants and other drugs are working, and the stigma of being treated is decreasing.
Aha! So it was also a study of advertising efficiency, and of the degree to which they have opened up the market by removing the social “stigma” of being treated. Social engineering at work!
- Drugs Vs. Scientology: A Set-Up?
- Mental Illness, The “HOT NEW THING”!
- Freedom Definition #1
- Educating the poor & freedom & choice
- Protecting Our Freedoms
- Prev: John Paul 2 Dream
- Next: Drugs Vs. Scientology: A Set-Up?
June 14th, 2005 at 6:36 pm
Here comes the political junkie to set it straight…
There is total blackout on this subject akin to “deep intergration” between the Americas or another similar story which was just as controversial named TIA (total information awareness) by John Pointdexter.
TIA is now under a new banner and getting the blackout treatment this time around they won’t make the same mistake twice…
Deep intergration can only be found if you follow geo-political meetings such as CFR, but will never be part of the MSM until too late… (the only strong growing movment against it is from the far-left in Canada)
As for you question about the Mental act… Congress has passed it easily and it is slowly being implimented in schools across he country. It is veiled under guidelines in the school bureacracy so that it doesn’t appear as one huge policy but more of a state of mind towards student behavior.
Prior to this Act, kids in both the US and Canada were strongly suggested within any behaviour problem to get into Prozac and Ritalin, this act simply makes this solution more part of “the books”.
So to make a long story short and excuse the pun, but the Act is being “Institutionalized” within the school system as a whole and not as a drug campaign or No Child Left Behind programs as we have seen in the past.
Hope I helped a little…
June 14th, 2005 at 6:56 pm
yeah thats what i suspected and was worried about. boy oh boy… im sure this will also mean that it will be criminal to refuse these drug treatments for your kids. this just makes me so mad i could… i could…. shit, i dont know what i can do. i guess thats the whole point.
June 14th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
Indeed parents may face charges against them or lose their kids to child services (if the family is slightly lower class - defenceless) at worse or have their kid expelled at least from the school (upper middle class - must spend money till broke to keep kid).
All of these stories roaming around of old German folk whom are moving away noting that they have all seen this before is not a joke…
Take the main story today in alt-news in which Bush wants to strike the 22nd ammendment (two term presidency) Couple with the DC metro poster, Gitmo…
You start to understand these former Germans and why they are fleeing.
Been there, done that. The boots are stomping louder and louder…
June 14th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Hi Tim. Please check out my comment at Rigorous Intuition.. Had I known in advance you would post this, I would have commented here rather than there (where it was somewhat off-topic). Too long to reproduce here, but in-a-nutshell: Many news items today and yesterday that relate to this issue. MSM won’t connect the dots, but I will: the counter-initiatory plan is to control everybody through forced pharmaceuticals.
June 14th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
I’m particuarly alarmed by this article in the Boston Globe, which cheerily reports how new technology can monitor emotional states.
June 14th, 2005 at 8:11 pm
There may be a window of opportunity to form a coalition to resist this agenda. Normally, Christian fundamentalists scare the bejeezus out of me. But I think many of them are as concerned as we are about government encroachments into our mental, spiritual and psychic space. Note the growing concern about RFID’s being the “mark of the beast”. (For example, google “RFID and 666″). The general narrative is that any Christian who accepts the “mark” will lose his soul.
I generally avoid any metaphysical statement that can’t be backed up by a well-grounded and/or pragmatic interpretation. But now it’s crystal clear to me how one loses his soul by accepting the “mark”. Basically, any device that provides external access to your neurochemistry exposes you to control of your spiritual progress (at least in the present incarnation). Accept the device in the 21st century age of psychopharmaceuticals and psychotronics and you doom yourself to total government control.
If this can be articulated in these terms to Christians who will listen, it might be possible to build a broad resistance. I’m a scientist, not a political organizer, so I have no idea how to go about it. But I put the idea out there.
June 14th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Hi, Tim –
This might not be the right place, but I’ve been wanting to address your blanket condemnation of psychiatric meds.
I would admit that:
- Psychiatry is extremely primitive, diagnoses can be very dubious, and there are some scary people practicing it.
- Most doctors don’t know how to prescribe these drugs. Insurance companies don’t support the use of these drugs in the way they would optimally work.
- These drugs can be full of side effects, sometimes worse than what they are supposed to relieve.
But I don’t see any problem with voluntary, informed use of such medications, especially by adults. You’ve talked as if bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, etc. are just labels for phases of life (and sure, many people are given these labels who shouldn’t be), but from my experience they are extreme states of consciousness that can seem entirely inescapable, which can make you very unhappy and which make it hard to do the things you want to do. (And which can sometimes just come out of nowhere and hit you like a truck on a highway.)
Some people find that a light comes on when they start taking Prozac or whatever. They are suddenly able to do more than just basic survival tasks. They’re no longer compulsively repeating “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die” under their breath. If people feel like they’re themselves again, that they can go back to being creative and are no longer miserable — even though it means taking a drug every day — I don’t think that’s so bad.
And even though I’m not very fond of the pharmaceutical companies, they’ve been coming out with less toxic and more effective psychiatric meds in recent years.
(In my own life, the results of such has been more ambiguous, but I think I’m in the category of people who believe that Western medicine works for those who believe in it, but personally does not have enough faith for it to work reliably. I’ve never truly believed that antibiotics can help me either.)
June 14th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
i get what youre saying yasha, and appreciate it. its definitely something ive considered before and which i know i dont have all the answers for. ill try to come back and give a more thorough overview of my thoughts on the subject. im more coming from a background of people like thomas szasz and r.d. laing in my thinking. i also don’t think polluting your body with chemicals is ever going to be an effective solution for anything. short term maybe it has positive effects, i won’t doubt that. but nobody really knows the ultimate trade-off, in terms of long term physical effects, or neuro-chemical, or possible even genetic. never mind spiritually and creatively.
slomo, i think you make a great point. conspiracists from our side of the fence tend to trash christian fundamentalists as much as we trash the NWO-style perpetrators. it might be extremely worthwhile to quit bickering and band together. i’d like to write about this some more as well.
June 14th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
[…] rap! Garrett just pointed out the craziest possibility to me after reading my posts on the new forced pharmaceutical measures, and Scientology. This is p […]
June 14th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
any device that provides external access to your neurochemistry exposes you to control of your spiritual progress.here is a short list of such devices.
t.v.
computers.
books.
newspapers.
computers.
movies.
tom cruise.
marshall mcluhan is important reading in this regard.this pharma/scientology thingy is just the new flavour of the same old meal we`ve been eating all these years.
the antidote is staying awage and exerting flexibility over your environment.
i have to say though,as a parent,if a teacher forced my children to take poison due to thier inability to baby-sit i would take them as far away as possible.the orwellian possibilities to say nothing of the kafkaesque are chilling.
i have done ssri s in an attempt to deal with divorce,some 15 years ago now and i was told after the initial phase by a psychiatrist that i would have to take some variant of this medication for the rest of my life,as i was,in his words,predisposed to worry.yep,aren`t we all.
so i diminished the dose and then stopped entirely and spent a week hiding in my basement.i can`t even begin to describe what i was experiencing but i wasn`t able to deal with anything above ground for quite a few days.
i am at a loss as to suggest recourse,if the legislation becomes enforced in any agressive way.to give teachers prescriptive powers is monstrous.
what yasha is saying is true also but psychiatrists got out of the councelling business around 1980 when they started really promoting the myth of add and so now we all have to be drugged because another group of doctors can`t get the job to pay like they demand any other way.
we have to learn to treat ourselves and stay away from doctors like we have to stay away from cops,judges and lawyers.otherwise we are going to be shark bait.
June 14th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
if you really want to scare yourself just casually poll people to see how many are doing ssri s or mao inhibitors.firstly,you will be surprised how people will freely discuss this with you.the “stigma” of mental ilness is certainly lifted.then you`ll be shocked to find out how many people are actually consuming this stuff.it`s being sold on t.v. like candy.zoloft.the name alone is masterful.a zone aloft that is soft,uplifting and comforting and better that panic and anxiety.FUCK…..run to the hills.
doctors in the 50`s were telling people that smoking was good for lung health.even though since the mid 1700s there was a correlation between snuff and lipand gum cancer.now look at what they`re selling.whores.
June 14th, 2005 at 10:32 pm
alistair, I agree with you about other lo-tech forms of propaganda/brainwashing. Yes, the media is the message. BUT, a major turning point is FORCING people to participate in the delusion. Today, but maybe not much longer, I can (and mostly do) opt out of the madness.
RE: getting off SSRI’s. Did it myself, with very few problems (other than a few minor meltdowns at work). The key is tapering off slowly. That said, I agree with Yasha, psychopharmaceuticals can be useful and helpful if taken voluntarily for a limited period of time.
June 14th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
BTW, I’ve had better effects with regular meditation (only 10-15 minutes per day) than with SSRIs.
June 14th, 2005 at 10:35 pm
i agree with you there slomo, but again this is one of those cases where i feel compelled to take up a really radical position on it, if only to counter the stuff we normally hear about it. i do recognize these things do some good for some people
June 14th, 2005 at 10:56 pm
Tim, I wholeheartedly agree with your position: mandatory Prozac is sinister.
A related topic, which touches on what I do professionally, is that the FDA is not really set up to evaluate safety for prolonged drug use. There is a history here and also an element of pragmatism. For cancer and HIV drugs, emphasizing efficacy over safety makes sense (when the alternative to not taking the drug is certain death). But for psychopharms, the issues are far less clear, since presumably most people could live without SSRIs. The pragmatic issue is, how do you evaluate the safety of long-term use for new drugs, unless you monitor post-market? But, I digress….
My personal position is that drugs are great for fixing life-threatening or short-term problems, but not advisable for long-term, non-terminal problems.
June 14th, 2005 at 11:00 pm
i did taper off slowly.then bugout.my psychiatrist did warn me that my system was anxiety prone.i discovered st.johns wort.that helped some of the jagged stuff but co-enzyme q-10 and dhea combined do the trick now.i am a hypnotherapist and do some meditation but the real improvements i have found is in the work i do seeing improvement in others.franky i`m too wired for meditation so i ride my bike and play soccer.i`m really fit for 44 years old.so i put my psychosis to work.ha ha ha……..but seriously…..i`m wired all the time and i`ve come to live with it and not make it anyone else`s trip.i teach stress management because i`m an expert at managing my neurochemistry with nlp and i`m an exreme case so my clients can`t bullshit me.i realise that it`s a lot easier to ride the horse in the direction he`s going in.you look so much more competent that way.and a sense of humour helps too.
June 14th, 2005 at 11:55 pm
i know i could just as easily look it up, but what do SSRI’s do?
June 15th, 2005 at 1:56 am
For free SSRI’s, just have some tap water!
Traces of the antidepressant Prozac can be found in the nation’s drinking water, it has been revealed. An Environment Agency report suggests so many people are taking the drug nowadays it is building up in rivers and groundwater.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3545684.stm
There’s been a similar report in Swedish press, just a few months ago.
June 15th, 2005 at 1:57 am
…it quotes the Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesman, Norman Baker MP, as saying the picture emerging looked like “a case of hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public”.
June 15th, 2005 at 3:04 am
The function of SSRIs are so gradual that that’s almost one of this class of drugs’ selling points. You don’t notice their effectiveness until you no longer notice the source of your affliction.
I’ve been on Luvox for about 7 or 8 years now to treat OCD. All I can say is, at this point, missing a dose for a 24 hour period leads to an extreme onslaught of ordinary sensational signals that all is not right. Your vision somehow becomes “slower” than your conscious “gyroscope” and it makes you feel out of place by a few seconds and sorta overcomes you with wonderment at whether you’ll survive not being on it.
Luckily it is easy to get off them. As slomo says, you must do it gradually or slowly, as I have begun to do.
There is also another interesting aspect to SSRIs that you don’t hear about until some kid goes off the deep end and kills his schoolmates. And that is akathisia or “psychomotor restlessness”. I’ve felt this myself from time to time, which is the main reason I’m weaning myself off of it.
I used to describe to my doctors that I sometimes got this hurryuphurryuphurryuphurryup feeling that I couldn’t ever really explain. They said it was my anxiety. I said it “felt” different than normal anxiety. It was more like the loss of all control over my mind. It was psychically “noisy”. The only way to stem it is to quickly engage yourself in someone elses thought stream. Whatever mindless blather that is on the TV works usually and slamming a beer real fast helps too. But it wasn’t until those shootings in Minnesota and the mention of the term akathisia that I eventually put two and two together.
I easily saw how a kid with no other intuitive traits but what his limited experience told him to do would lose full control over this “side effect” of SSRIs. I’ve gone from 150mg to 50mg in the last few months. I suppose tomorrow I’ll begin with a 25mg dose to get the end of this started.
The key I suppose is the gradualness of these drugs’ effectiveness and also the ineffectiveness of being without them. It’s like an addiction that can infect the higher or more pure forms of human virtue. It cancels them from you and then the physical state takes over from there.
June 15th, 2005 at 3:15 am
As per Kabir’s comment, how is this any different than the concept of soylent green? Does anybody know the metabolistic biodegradable nature of these chemicals? What happens when this shit is everywhere and lo and behold, doesn’t break down, but collects in the closed environments we subsist within?
June 15th, 2005 at 6:36 am
Re: prozac and other pharmaceuticals in drinking water. This is an active area of scientific research. Very important, and very worrisome among environmental scientists.
Re: SSRI’s and what they do. The “Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor” is a class of drugs that includes Prozac, Paxil, Celexa, Lexapro, etc. (but not Wellbutrin). The body has a natural mechanism whereby excess seratonin (which is one of the naturally occuring brain chemicals associated with feelings of well-being) is reabsorbed. SSRIs function by blocking this mechanism, thereby increasing the abundance of seratonin.
June 15th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
i’m with yasha on this one. as i’ve said in another post, i have some personal experience with psychiatric drugs, and they can definitely help people. what’s the difference between taking prozac to keep from killing yourself because you’ve been driven nutso by being stuck in a nasty control system, and taking lsd because you wanna seek enlightenment and can’t find another way because you’re stuck in a nasty control system?
the problem isn’t the drugs; they’re just additional parts of the materia with no inherent value one way or another. the problem is the control system in which they’re utilized.
are they overprescribed by evil pharmaceautical companies who only care about the bottom line? well, yeah. but that doesn’t mean that ALL such drugs are EVIL and can NEVER help ANYONE.
June 15th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
Wikipedia has a great article on the New Freedom (*gag*) Commission here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Freedom_Commission_on_Mental_Health
and they list that some groups have organized to oppose it, including: http://www.MindFreedom.org
June 15th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
“Why would you go to your priest for a major depressive disorder? **
Egad. This asshole apparently forgets the origin of the office, doesn’t he?
October 19th, 2005 at 12:27 am
[…] direction they could go is looking at the shameful tactics of pharmaceutical companies to forcibly drug the population. All these developments are of pa […]
January 14th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
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