Most people (including Members of Congress and the press) won’t read the nearly 2,000-page healthcare bill (“Affordable Health Care for America Act”: H.R. 3962). Consequently, like most Americans, they are oblivious to the elephant in the living room that’s about to transform the nation. While legislators shadow-box over public-versus-private options, trillion-dollar debts, and socialized medicine, tucked away in the bill under warm and fuzzy labels are numerous sops to the mental-health industry.

If enacted, these will serve to prop up an already misrepresented collection of disorders and channel ever-more-billions into the psycho-pharmaceutical industry that could be better directed toward research for cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other known, physical ailments that cost families a fortune and send their victims to gruesome, painful deaths.

Worse, however, is what this bill will do to America as a constitutional republic — and indeed what is left of the entire free world, since no doubt it will follow the United States’ lead. With legal legitimacy for unprovable mental disorders will come, inevitably, an excuse to marginalize individuals on the basis of conscience, outspokenness, and politics. Thus far, the United States has been among the few countries to dodge that particular bullet — even though we have been moving ever-closer for 40 years to that outcome via draconian measures aimed at instituting political correctness. But this bill will send the issue over the edge and discourage anyone from honest exchanges of ideas.

Most Members of Congress, unfortunately, rely on youngish aides to provide synopses of a bill’s provisions. Elected politicians, most of whom know little about medicine anyway, can hardly be expected to read and analyze a document that exceeds the size of War and Peace in the space of a few days, complete with technical and legal jargon. Their aides, unfortunately, are mostly products of a failed and politicized education system that has spent some four decades skipping over the particulars of our Constitution and the related debates of its Framers. So, to expect such individuals to catch mistakes that might compromise the health of the republic, not to mention the physical health of the populace, is wishful thinking.

Let us examine, then, some of the key components of this House bill that serve to sustain and support an already out-of-control mental-health, quasi-political industry.

The Mothers Act (Section 2529, Page 1418 of the bill.)

Ah, mom and apple pie — how American is that?

Turns out, not very…

The bill’s language seeks, for example, to “expand treatment for postpartum conditions” and calls for the development of “improved screening and diagnostic techniques.” No provisions, however, are made to ensure that the entities doing the screening and treatment are free of conflicts of interest vis-à-vis pharmaceutical investments.

Let’s take the company Screening for Mental Health, Inc., and its sub-organization, “Signs of Suicide.” Both promote and conduct mental-health screening. The umbrella organization received $4,985,925 from pharmaceutical companies prior to 2008, and 10 of its psychiatric researchers have been exposed in just the past year for failing to disclose millions of dollars in pharmaceutical payments. Yet, this bill contains no requirements of “full disclosure” for entities in receipt of federal grants to perform research or create “promos” (promotional campaigns).

An example of a “promo” would be the provision calling for a nationwide public-relations campaign using TV, radio, and public service announcements (PSAs) to urge that all women be screened and seek treatment for the questionable “disorder” called postpartum depression. Many physicians say this is not an “illness,” but a cultural phenomenon, in which a new mother feels overwhelmed with her duties — all-night jags with crying babies, endless diaper changes, and an onslaught of laundry and feedings. Mothers of yesteryear knew this sort of thing “came with the territory,” but modern moms, who tend to simultaneously try to hold down careers, and who are under constant pressure in the media to look sexy and “have it all,” are suffering accordingly.

The Mothers Act also calls for “clinical research” in developing new treatments (read: drugs) for this questionable ailment, but again, no guidelines exist to ensure that researchers and research firms are free from conflicts of interest. In fact, it would be unusual if they were not awash in such conflicts because in order to obtain a medical research grant or contract, the successful competitor is expected to have experience with pharmaceuticals.

Mental-health Parity (Section 214, Page 100)

This idea has been floated before. It guarantees equal insurance coverage for mental disorders and physical diseases, whether under regular health insurance or via new coverage, such as the Health Insurance Exchange. It is interesting to note that typically, psychiatric patients are “cured” as soon as insurance benefits run out, lending a credibility gap to the entire notion.

In this bill, of course, the benefits never run out. Considering there are no medical tests to verify the existence of any psychiatric disorder (blood work, urinalysis, X-ray, etc.), meaning that government has nothing other than a psychiatrist’s opinion that the person is “cured,” parity becomes a taxpayer-funded cash-cow. No doubt billions can be channeled into the psycho-pharmaceutical industry to continue drugging Americans, as the provision could easily encompass all 374 disorders listed in psychiatry’s diagnostic manual — everything from Phase of Life Problem to Arithmetic Disorder.

Home Visitations for Families with Young Children and Expectant Parents (Section 1904, Page 1177 of the bill)

This section creates a home-visitation program for families with young children, for families that are expecting children, and even for families with certain “risk factors.” This is one of the more dangerous sections that already have a counterpart on the political scene. Since the 1970s, parents wishing to adopt a child, for example, have been scrutinized for their disciplinary beliefs (such as spanking). Spanking is one of the few ways to get the attention of toddlers who are below the age of reason. For example, it is useless to explain to a toddler why it is dangerous to go out in the street without looking to the left and right for vehicles; yet, any toddler who wanders off and is injured or killed as a result brings down the entire force of Child Protective Services upon the parents, mandatory “parenting” classes (by psychology “experts,” of course) and charges of negligence.

This section also provides assessments regarding matters of “age-appropriate behaviors” for children, prevention of family violence, and referral to outside services. Never mind that government-mandated graphic sex education for kindergartners is wholly age-inappropriate. With an inconsistency that blatant, it is no stretch to imagine that parents could be held “accountable” for holding politically incorrect viewpoints (whatever those may be in, say, five years), with the threat of removal of a child from the home in the offing.

Already, parents adhering to firm religious beliefs (regardless of faith) are characterized as “inflexible,” “dogmatic,” and “intolerant,” as exemplified by the North Carolina judge who, on March 11, 2009, took issue with the mother’s religious faith and even ordered a mental evaluation on no basis other than the mother's “conservative Christian beliefs,” then ordered her child to public school so that the student could be properly socialized.

The American Civil Liberties Union has long taken the position, as have other anti-religion organizations, that a parent’s rights “stop at the schoolhouse door.” This argument generated a wave of public outrage in a 2007 case before the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. But the roots of this sort of logic can be found in old writings from Sigmund Freud as well as in Erich Fromm’s 1947 psychoanalytic scale of “authoritarian characteristics,” which was used to “eliminate” political opponents in his homeland of Germany. Fromm had already hypothesized that the family “predisposes men to blind submission,” his seminal work from 1941 being entitled (tellingly) Escape From Freedom.

Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor Adorno’s Cross-Studies on Child Training and Personality (1947) contributed further to the notion that parents were too inflexible to raise children. Dr. Brock Chisholm’s speech to the World Federation of Mental Health in 1946 provided, perhaps, the most scathing indictment of parental authority.  But as recently as 2003, a joint study by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation (at a public cost of $1.2 million) postulated that adherents to conventional moral principles and limited government are actually mentally disturbed. The study correlated morality and individualism with “dogmatism” and “uncertainty avoidance,” leading to “lowered self-esteem, fear, anger, pessimism, disgust, and contempt” (Jost, J. T., J. Glaser, et al. (2003), “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin 129(3): 339-375 and at http://www.apa.org/journals/bul/503ab.html).

Thus should Americans be concerned about any suggestion of home visitations by government as “routine.”

School-based Health Clinics (Section 2511, Page 1352)

School-Based Health Clinics include subjective psychiatric mental-health screening for children (a.k.a. “assessments” since the 1980s). These already have invaded classrooms under a guise of academics. The bill’s referral to “a continuum of services including emergency psychiatric care, community support programs, inpatient care, and outpatient programs” as part of “comprehensive primary health services” launches a project to mix primary healthcare with psychological services on a permanent basis. This would clear the way for psycho-pharmaceutical products to be channeled directly or indirectly into schools.

As explained previously, psychiatric screening and counseling extends to assessing worldviews and political issues that, no matter what faction does it, conflicts gravely with the U.S. Constitution.

Wellness Program Grants for Small Employers (Section 112, Page 67)

Grants for “wellness” serve as incentives for employers to include mental-health evaluations for contractors, grantees, and even non-governmental businesses. The most objectionable part of the program entails a “Behavioral Change Component” that encourages “healthy living through counseling” for programs relating to “tobacco use, obesity, stress management, depression and mental health.” The problem with this? Anything labeled “behavioral change” in psychology means “worldview change” and “attitude/perception adjustment.” Can re-education camps be far behind?
Re-education is part and parcel of dictatorial regimes. It was used by the Nazis, the Soviets, the Stasi, the North Koreans, and South Africa under apartheid. So this bill subtly moves psychiatric counseling from voluntary to mandatory.

Also, the term behavioral is misleading; it doesn’t mean conduct, as in good manners. It means changing the belief system.  That is a far cry from habits like eating junk food and smoking. It moves into the realm of political attitudes — the very thing the Framers of our Constitution worked to avoid in splitting from European models of government.

Federally Qualified Behavioral Health Centers (Section 2513, Page 1367)

These proposed centers take the “Behavioral Change Component” of Wellness Program grants, described above, to a new level. To obtain a grant, an organization or individual must compete and/or “qualify.”  “Qualifying” is the kicker. In order for community mental-health centers to qualify, they have to provide, among other things, “mental health screening, assessment and diagnosis,” as well as “outpatient clinic mental health services, including screening, assessment, diagnosis, psychotherapy and medication,” plus “crisis mental health services, including 24-hour mobile crisis teams,” which means a person can be carted off to a psychiatric facility (prison?) if government deems it necessary.

This is psychology on steroids! If you thought the old Soviet Union or North Korean or East German psychiatric “hospitals” were alone in incarcerating  and drugging out-of-favor individuals, think again, because America is playing with fire in this healthcare provision. All drugs, of course, come with side effects, some relatively mild to full-blown intolerances and allergic reactions.  But psychiatric drugs are particularly lacking a track record and are highly risky.

Retired pediatric neurologist, Dr. Fred Baughman, has repeatedly testified and written concerning this.  In a November 4, 2009, letter to the Wall Street Journal following an article on the troubling number of apparent suicides in the military by soldiers prescribed psychiatric drugs, Dr. Baughman stated:  “Although antipsychotics (Ray, et al, 2009), antidepressants (Whang, et al, 2009) and psychostimulants/amphetamines (Gould, et al, 2009)) have been proved to increase the risk of sudden cardiac death, they are routinely prescribed together, as if no such risk was known.”  Just “not waking up” one morning is not a catch-all for suicide, yet it is happening with increasing frequency in connection with psychiatric drugs.  Some instances seem to mimic heart failure, seizures and strokes, but not quite — especially when there is no history or other factor indicating such a problem.

Moreover, we are speeding down a road that will be difficult to reverse once instituted — all in the name of easing the financial strain on individuals and families caused by rising health costs.

Yes, health costs are bankrupting financially responsible people. But at least three reasons have little to do with government:  (1) new technologies, which are often effective, but very cutting-edge; (2) health insurance companies, which at first rushed to fill the void, but quickly morphed into multibillion-dollar enterprises whose investors are unconcerned with patient comfort or even recovery, resulting in non-stop questions concerning every drug and procedure; and (3) a dearth of qualified physicians under a medical-school system that works to keep its numbers down, thereby artificially creating shortages of physicians and keeping salaries high.

Meanwhile, government’s interest in healthcare is related solely to cost-cutting, not quality of service or patient recovery. The exceptions are programs for Members of Congress, whose procedures and medications are never questioned under their unique program.

Moreover, some 110 new boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs fill the pages of this so-called “Affordable Health Care for America Act,” which reveals a Pandora’s Box of covert psychological/mental-health programs like those described above. Others include such items as a mental-health technician training program (Section 3101, p. 1898) and an Indian youth tele-mental health demonstration project (Section 3101, p. 1909).

Real advancements in medicine, of course, are a realistic goal, and Americans can agree on a reasonable expectation of caring alternatives to the status quo.  These dual objectives scream for some new thinking from “outside the box.”

What healthcare doesn’t need is a hidden, politicized agenda that institutionalizes thought control and re-education centers.

In regard to reader commentary on this article, I would like to add that I have noticed that any objection to over-reaches by the mental-health industry, regardless of the context, tends to be met with allegations of “having an agenda.” There’s an agenda, all right; I could see that “agenda” on the wall when I was a classroom teacher, way back in the early 1970s. And it wasn’t coming from me. It was coming from a host of behavioral-science advocates and organizations that were asked to come speak at our teacher-inservice workshops. Educators took the advice of these behavioral scientists, as did parents, and now we have out-of-control schools where nearly half the kids are either diagnosed with a disorder, on a psychiatric drug of some kind (or, more accurately, a cocktail of such drugs, to mitigate the side-effects), in Special Education, or all of the above. Nothing like any of this was happening in the 1950s.
 
As to my not having any facts to support my position: I spent the entire article giving facts that anybody could look up, including page numbers in the Bill itself, and expert testimony by a noted neurologist. Oh, as for “no experience” on my part: I do have a background in the topic, not just through course work but through my 1999 award-winning bestseller, which I spent three years researching: Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education. See Part III, in particular, of that book for a detailed analysis and history of the problems I allude to in the article.
 
My question is: Where are the “facts” on the psychology side? As I wrote, there is no X-ray, blood work, urinalysis, or chemical finding yet to be located relative to any of the trendy disorders listed in the bible of the psychiatric profession, the DSM-IV.
 
Of course, some people do erroneously include things like “narcolepsy” among these mental disorders (I’ve even heard it in legislative testimony by people who should know better), and that is a pity because narcolepsy is a physical disease with visible mental outcomes. But it doesn’t change the fact that psychiatric drugs for purely emotional phenomena, or even “stress,” have no track record of success. Many, in fact (esp. antidepressants and antipsychotics), are now suspect (even by Congress) of being culpable in violent, out-of-character aggression.
 
Moreover, a look at this morning’s newspaper about the professional psychiatrist who just yesterday killed and wounded dozens of soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas, and who probably knew more about psych meds than I do, having dealt with them himself, allows me to rest my case….”  
 

Beverly K. Eakman is a former educator and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper at the Johnson Space Center. Today, she is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, the author of five books, and a frequent keynote speaker. Her most recent book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks (Midnight Whistler Publishers).
 

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HK said:

this article is sad and misinformed the psychiatric issues you rail against are real. you have of course no facts to prove that they're not--because there are none--nor relevant expertise to support your credibility. you intimate that the cited provisions are meant to force political correctness. there's of course no evidence for that and accordingly that claim is facially absurd. if your argument is that there's no blood test to prove certain psychological problems, then you're missing the range of relevant tests. genetic tests can prove certain mental disorders, but that's also not the point. spend a few hours in a psych emergency room and then tell us that psychological disorders are purely imagined. i don't know if you have a political agenda, or if you do, what it is. that's entirely irrelevant. what you've written has no medical basis and is against every piece of medical evidence collected by the american psychological association. it's also incredibly irresponsible. the worst part is that the provisions you cite would work to help real people who are suffering from mental disorders. you should be ashamed of yourself for criticizing them with no facts, no studies and no medical background to support your arguments.

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November 05, 2009
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Beth said:

	concerned citizen I appreciate that Ms. Eakman has written this article! This is the exact thing I have been watching regarding the Health Care Bill. That no one else is paying attention to the mental health agenda that is in this Bill. Americans will find themselves a psychiatric nation if this goes through! We need to speak up, NOW!
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November 06, 2009
Votes: -1

For Freedom... said:

Wisdom from Frederic Bastiat [Author of the book "The Law"] "To paraphrase Frederic Bastiat, in order for laws and those who enforce them to be respected, they must be respectable. As the central government progressively takes on the attributes of both a criminal syndicate and an army of occupation, it is depriving peaceful, law-abiding citizens of the means of defending their property and livelihood." TNA - 1/3/2000

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November 06, 2009
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Jon Batson said:

Forwarding a very old agenda The Affordable Health Care for America Act sounds like a good idea, but the mental health parity part scares me. It has long been known that the plan is to get every man, woman and child on drugs for life. This act just forwards that agenda. I think it needs to be read and considered before voted on. We're giving up too much and handing too much power to the wrong people.

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November 06, 2009
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KidsRpeople2 said:

U.S. Must ABOLISH Physical/Corporal Punishment (Spanking/Hitting with WOODEN PADDLES) of Children in ALL SCHOOLS School boards are asking for trouble to sanction a practice that is intended to inflict pain. Make no mistake: beating schoolchildren on their pelvic area with a wooden board causes more problems than it corrects -- if it corrects any at all. Teacher-training programs do not include instruction in the "correct method" for hitting students. Zero tolerance for weapons and violence is the standard that should apply to everyone in educational settings. Teachers included What corporal punishment does accomplish is to degrade the teaching profession, drive good people away, and make the teaching field a safe haven for the dangerously unfit. Its net effect on schools is a negative one. The more that schools indulge in paddling, the higher the dropout rate, along with all the social ills that follow, e.g., gang activity, addiction, mental health problems, unenployment, etc. The time is long over due for our lawmakers and education policy makers to apply the zero-tolerance rule universally. When paddlers complain, as some inevitably will, they should be advised to look beyond their classroom walls and see how schoolchildren are managed violence free throughout the civilized world. They should look and learn from the 30 states where corporal punishment in schools is forbidden by law. If they can't learn, they can't teach. Over 50 National Children's Health and Education Organizations have issued position statements to OPPOSE SCHOOL Corporal Punishment including the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Bar Assocation, the National PTA (Parent Teacher Association), National Education Association, Prevent Child Abuse America and the NAACP, among others.

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November 06, 2009
Votes: +1

KidsRpeople2 said:

U.S. Must ABOLISH Physical/Corporal Punishment of Children in ALL SCHOOLS Corporal Punishment of Children in Schools is an outmoded, ineffective and dangerous practice that has been banned in more than l00 countries. It puts school districts at risk for lawsuits for paddling injuries, which is the main reason many districts already have abandoned it. For example, a recent news headline reads, Nearly 60,000 spankings in Miss. schools last year." "Ouch! For the second time in a month, a school district in Leflore County has been hit with a lawsuit from a student alleging injuries from a paddling. An 11-year-old is seeking $500,000 from the Greenwood Public School District in a suit filed Monday in Leflore County Circuit Court. The child's attorney, James Littleton, said photographs show deep bruising on the then-10-year-old's buttocks and that he also suffered possible kidney damage."It was just unreal the abuse that this child took at the hands of a teacher," Littleton said. Paddling has been a hot-button issue of late in Leflore County. Just last month, the guardian of a 6-year-old kindergartner filed a $500,000 lawsuit against the Leflore County School District for alleged paddlings. In a recent news article it was reported that a state legal adviser, who told Bristol, Tennessee Director of Schools Gary Lilly that while school principals who paddled students were legally protected from allegations of assault, they were not immune from accusations of inappropriate or improper touching. There are positive, nonviolent approaches to school discipline that have been proven to lead to safe environments in which children can learn. Positive behavioral supports teach children why what they did was wrong and gives them the tools necessary to improve their behavior. The staff in our schools must be trained on how to discipline children effectively and humanely.

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November 06, 2009
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keith said:

	Got Te Blues Maybe you should throw away the pills and look at Beating The Blues program from ULTRASIS.c.uk
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November 08, 2009 | url
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keith said:

	Beating The Blues Got Te Blues Hey ! Maybe you should throw away the pills and look at Beating The Blues program from ULTRASIS.co.uk
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November 08, 2009 | url
Votes: -1

cp said:

	... Thanks Beverly, You are one of the few voices of reason. America needs to put a stop to the drugging of children. The psycho-pharmaceutical industry and their 374 disorders hoax listed in psychiatry’s diagnostic manual is the biggest crock ever enforced on a people. The psychs have attached themselves like leeches to the AMA.
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November 19, 2009
Votes: -1

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