Education is under attack from “mental health” agendas, with children as young as 6 removed from classrooms and incarcerated, fueling the 6.7 million American 0-17 year olds on psychotropic drugs and billions of dollars in drug sales.
By CCHR International
The Mental Health Watchdog
February 25, 2020
A 6-year-old girl was removed from a Florida school for being disruptive and committed to a behavioral health center for a psychiatric evaluation without her parent’s knowledge. She was held for two days and allegedly injected with an antipsychotic. Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a 50-year mental health industry watchdog, warns that the U.S. education system and parental rights are being usurped with psychiatric and psychological practices. Schools, they assert, are used as feeder lines into a mental health system, which profits from this. CCHR was responding to an incident where a licensed counselor with the school determined that Nadia, aged 6, was a candidate for involuntary detention under Florida’s Baker Act.
The special needs child reportedly threw some chairs in a tantrum.[1] But according to the Atlanta Black Star, a police body camera video, the girl behaved calmly as she was escorted from school by police. At one point, she asked officers if she was going to jail and was assured, no. The officer seemed skeptical of the school’s reason for calling 911. “She’s been actually very pleasant,” she noted. “I think it’s more of them not wanting to deal with it,” said another officer.[2]
Martina Falk, Nadia’s mother, was alerted only after her daughter was committed and said the nearly two-day mandatory stay at the psychiatric facility did more harm than good.[3]
It’s a common practice. Between July 2017 and June 2018, there were 36,078 involuntary examinations initiated under the Baker Act for individuals under the age of 18 in Florida.[4]
In another case, police picked up 6-year-old Nicholas, who’d thrown a tantrum at school and deposited him at River Point Behavioral Health in Florida. There Nicholas was allegedly given a bloody nose by another child and was locked in a “seclusion” room at 3 a.m. Nicholas was released only after a lawyer intervened.[5]
Schools are bowing to psychiatric and psychological “advice” that mental health screening, referrals for committal and institutionalization are a way of protecting students. CCHR reminds schools of comments from the president of History of Education Society, who in 1982, said, “Few intellectual and social movements of this century have had so deep and pervasive an influence on the theory and practice of American education as the mental hygiene movement.”[6] It’s only gotten worse.
In 2003, the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health recommended that all American schoolchildren be screened for “mental illness,” claiming—without proof—that “early detection, assessment, and links with treatment” could “prevent mental health problems from worsening.”[vii] But it hasn’t. Today, schools are expected to invoke state laws to have their students involuntarily committed and “treated.” That adds to the kids on psychiatric drugs crisis we now see, CCHR says.
IQVia Total Patient Tracker Database for 2019 reports 6,726,189 0-17 year olds had taken psychotropic drugs in 2019, of which 530,169 were aged 0-5.[8]
The drugs can cause aggressive, suicidal and disruptive behavior leading to children being incarcerated, where they are at risk of being further drugged and sexually abused. For example, last December, a Federal lawsuit was filed by the Cook County public guardian alleging that children as young as 7 were sexually abused, while others were injected with sedatives to control them and physically attacked at a Chicago private psychiatric hospital.[9]
February 17 marked 10 years since 11-year-old Ariana from Detroit, Michigan was prescribed an antipsychotic that caused debilitating effects. Coordinated with a local doctor, her mother, Maryanne, weaned her off the drug. Child Protective Services, accompanied by police, swooped on her home—without a proper warrant or order from a judge—to remove Ariana to incarcerate and forcibly drug her. International news covered Maryanne’s heroic 10-hour standoff with Detroit police, S.W.A.T. team and a military tank, when she refused to hand over her child to be drugged. Eventually, Ariana was taken to a psychiatric hospital and forced back onto antipsychotics—drugged so heavily that she was drooling when attorney Allison Folmar arrived with a court order to cease the drug. Maryanne was jailed following the standoff but then released and all child neglect charges—because she chose not to drug Ariana—were dismissed.[10] Sadly, in 2017, the mom who fought so courageously for her daughter’s life, died after suffering a brain aneurism.[1]
CCHR obtained 2019 drug statistics from IQVia. Of those aged 0-17, 3,396,066 were on “ADHD” drugs; 2,148,971 on antidepressants, despite the potential to induce suicidal behavior in this age group; 1,022,918 on antipsychotics, 1,303,095 on anti-anxiety drugs; 877,083 were taking mood stabilizers and 756,652 were on newer generation psychotherapeutics.[12]
Age Breakdown:
0-1 Years 106,678
2-3 Years 184,256
4-5 Years 263,363
6-12 Years 2,963,924
13-17 Years 3,335,146
States need to seriously look at the harm being committed in the name of mental health care and the detrimental effects on both children and our education system.
References:
[1] “Florida: Police took a 6-year-old girl to a mental health facility because she was ‘out of control’ at school,” The Mercury News, 17 Feb. 2020, https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/02/16/florida-police-took-a-6-year-old-girl-to-a-mental-health-facility-because-she-was-out-of-control-at-school/
[2] “‘They’re Using This…As a Way To Get Rid of Children’: Attorney Speaks Out After Police Escorts Six-Year-Old Girl to Mental Health Facility Following In-School Tantrum,” Atlanta Black Star, 17 Feb. 2020, https://atlantablackstar.com/2020/02/17/theyre-using-this-as-a-way-to-get-rid-of-children-attorney-speaks-out-after-police-escorts-six-year-old-girl-to-mental-health-facility-following-in-school-tantrum/
[3] “6-year-old Florida girl “traumatized” after being involuntarily sent to mental health facility,” CBS News, 13 Feb. 2020, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-baker-act-6-year-old-girl-sent-to-mental-health-facility-by-school/; “‘They’re Using This…As a Way To Get Rid of Children’: Attorney Speaks Out After Police Escorts Six-Year-Old Girl to Mental Health Facility Following In-School Tantrum,” Atlanta Black Star, 17 Feb. 2020, https://atlantablackstar.com/2020/02/17/theyre-using-this-as-a-way-to-get-rid-of-children-attorney-speaks-out-after-police-escorts-six-year-old-girl-to-mental-health-facility-following-in-school-tantrum/
[4] “Florida: Police took a 6-year-old girl to a mental health facility because she was ‘out of control’ at school,” The Mercury News, 17 Feb. 2020, https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/02/16/florida-police-took-a-6-year-old-girl-to-a-mental-health-facility-because-she-was-out-of-control-at-school/
[5] “How A 6-Year-Old Got Locked On A Psych Ward,” BuzzFeed News, 30 Dec. 2016, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/how-a-6-year-old-got-locked-on-a-psych-ward
[6] CCHR Int’s first education booklet
[7] “Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America,” The President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health Report, 22 July 2003, pp. 57-58.
[8] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/
[9] “A Chicago Psychiatric Hospital Is Under Fire After Child Abuse Allegations. Again,” ProPublica Illinois, 18 Dec. 2019.
[10] https://www.cchrint.org/issues/maryanne-godboldo/
[11] https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/10/13/maryanne-godboldo-dies/106588120/
[12] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/
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