Parental Consent Act of 2011 - Prohibits federal funds from being used to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health, psychiatric, or socioemotional screening program.
Prohibits federal education funds from being used to pay any local educational agency or other instrument of government that uses the refusal of a parent or legal guardian to provide consent to mental health screening as the basis of a charge of child abuse, child neglect, medical neglect, or education neglect until the agency or instrument demonstrates that it is no longer using such refusal as a basis of such charge.
Defines a screening program under this Act as any mental health screening program in which a set of individuals is automatically screened without regard to whether there was a prior indication of a need for mental health treatment, including: (1) any program of state incentive grants to implement recommendations in the July 2003 report of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, the State Early Childhood Comprehensive System, grants for TeenScreen, and the Foundations for Learning Grants; and (2) any student mental health screening program that allows mental health screening of individuals under 18 years of age without the express, written, voluntary, informed consent of the parent or legal guardian of the individual involved.
[Congressional Bills 112th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 2769 Introduced in House (IH)]
112th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 2769
To prohibit the use of Federal funds for any universal or mandatory
mental health screening program.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
August 1, 2011
Mr. Paul (for himself, Mr. Burton of Indiana, and Mrs. Blackburn)
introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on
Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on Ways and
Means and Education and the Workforce, for a period to be subsequently
determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such
provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To prohibit the use of Federal funds for any universal or mandatory
mental health screening program.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Parental Consent Act of 2011''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds as follows:
(1) The United States Preventive Services Task Force
(USPSTF) issued findings and recommendations against screening
for suicide that corroborate those of the Canadian Preventive
Services Task Force, ``USPSTF found no evidence that screening
for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality. There
is limited evidence on the accuracy of screening tools to
identify suicide risk in the primary care setting, including
tools to identify those at high risk.''.
(2) The 1999 Surgeon General's report on mental health
admitted the serious conflicts in the medical literature
regarding the definitions of mental health and mental illness
when it said, ``In other words, what it means to be mentally
healthy is subject to many different interpretations that are
rooted in value judgments that may vary across cultures. The
challenge of defining mental health has stalled the development
of programs to foster mental health (Secker, 1998). . . .''.
(3) A 2005 report by the National Center for Infant and
Early Childhood Health Policy admitted, with respect to the
psychiatric screening of children from birth to age 5, the
following: ``We have mentioned a number of the problems for the
new field of IMH [Infant Mental Health] throughout this paper,
and many of them complicate examining outcomes.''. Briefly,
such problems include:
(A) Lack of baseline.
(B) Lack of agreement about diagnosis.
(C) Criteria for referrals or acceptance into
services are not always well defined.
(D) Lack of longitudinal outcome studies.
(E) Appropriate assessment and treatment requires
multiple informants involved with the young child:
parents, clinicians, child care staff, preschool staff,
medical personnel, and other service providers.
(F) Broad parameters for determining socioemotional
outcomes are not clearly defined, although much
attention is now being given to school readiness.
(4) Authors of the bible of psychiatric diagnosis, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, admit that the diagnostic
criteria for mental illness are vague, saying, ``DSM-IV
criteria remain a consensus without clear empirical data
supporting the number of items required for the diagnosis. . .
. Furthermore, the behavioral characteristics specified in DSM-
IV, despite efforts to standardize them, remain subjective. . .
.'' (American Psychiatric Association Committee on the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV 1994), pp. 1162-
1163).
(5) Because of the subjectivity of psychiatric diagnosis,
it is all too easy for a psychiatrist to label a person's
disagreement with the psychiatrist's political beliefs a mental
disorder.
(6) Efforts are underway to add a diagnosis of ``extreme
intolerance'' to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
Prisoners in the California State penal system judged to have
this extreme intolerance based on race or sexual orientation
are considered to be delusional and are being medicated with
anti-psychotic drugs (Washington Post 12/10/05).
(7) At least one federally funded school violence
prevention program has suggested that a child who shares his or
her parent's traditional values may be likely to instigate
school violence.
(8) Despite many statements in the popular press and by
groups promoting the psychiatric labeling and medication of
children, that ADD/ADHD is due to a chemical imbalance in the
brain, the 1998 National Institutes of Health Consensus
Conference said, ``. . . further research is necessary to
firmly establish ADHD as a brain disorder. This is not unique
to ADHD, but applies as well to most psychiatric disorders,
including disabling diseases such as schizophrenia. . . .
Although an independent diagnostic test for ADHD does not
exist. . . . Finally, after years of clinical research and
experience with ADHD, our knowledge about the cause or causes
of ADHD remains speculative.''.
(9) There has been a precipitous increase in the
prescription rates of psychiatric drugs in children:
(A) The use of antipsychotic medication in children
has increased nearly fivefold between 1995 and 2002
with more than 2.5 million children receiving these
medications, the youngest being 18 months old
(Vanderbilt University, 2006).
(B) More than 2.2 million children are receiving
more than one psychotropic drug at one time with no
scientific evidence of safety or effectiveness (Medco
Health Solutions, 2006).
(C) More money was spent on psychiatric drugs for
children than on antibiotics or asthma medication in
2003 (Medco Trends, 2004).
(10) A September 2004 Food and Drug Administration hearing
found that more than two-thirds of studies of antidepressants
given to depressed children showed that they were no more
effective than placebo, or sugar pills, and that only the
positive trials were published by the pharmaceutical industry.
The lack of effectiveness of antidepressants has been known by
the Food and Drug Administration since at least 2000 when,
according to the Food and Drug Administration Background
Comments on Pediatric Depression, Robert Temple of the Food and
Drug Administration Office of Drug Evaluation acknowledged the
``preponderance of negative studies of antidepressants in
pediatric populations''. The Surgeon General's report said of
stimulant medication like Ritalin, ``However, psychostimulants
do not appear to achieve long-term changes in outcomes such as
peer relationships, social or academic skills, or school
achievement.''.
(11) The Food and Drug Administration finally acknowledged
by issuing its most severe Black Box Warnings in September
2004, that the newer antidepressants are related to suicidal
thoughts and actions in children and that this data was hidden
for years. A confirmatory review of that data published in 2006
by Columbia University's department of psychiatry, which is
also the originator of the TeenScreen instrument, found that
``in children and adolescents (aged 6-18 years), antidepressant
drug treatment was significantly associated with suicide
attempts . . . and suicide deaths. . . .''. The Food and Drug
Administration had over 2,000 reports of completed suicides
from 1987 to 1995 for the drug Prozac alone, which by the
agency's own calculations represent but a fraction of the
suicides. Prozac is the only such drug approved by the Food and
Drug Administration for use in children.
(12) Other possible side effects of psychiatric medication
used in children include mania, violence, dependence, weight
gain, and insomnia from the newer antidepressants; cardiac
toxicity including lethal arrhythmias from the older
antidepressants; growth suppression, psychosis, and violence
from stimulants; and diabetes from the newer anti-psychotic
medications.
(13) Parents are already being coerced to put their
children on psychiatric medications and some children are dying
because of it. Universal or mandatory mental health screening
and the accompanying treatments recommended by the New Freedom
Commission on Mental Health will only increase that problem.
Across the country, Patricia Weathers, the Carroll Family, the
Johnston Family, and the Salazar Family were all charged or
threatened with child abuse charges for refusing or taking
their children off of psychiatric medications.
(14) The United States Supreme Court in Pierce versus
Society of Sisters (268 U.S. 510 (1925)) held that parents have
a right to direct the education and upbringing of their
children.
(15) Universal or mandatory mental health screening
violates the right of parents to direct and control the
upbringing of their children.
(16) Federal funds should never be used to support programs
that could lead to the increased over-medication of children,
the stigmatization of children and adults as mentally disturbed
based on their political or other beliefs, or the violation of
the liberty and privacy of Americans by subjecting them to
invasive ``mental health screening'' (the results of which are
placed in medical records which are available to government
officials and special interests without the patient's consent).
SEC. 3. PROHIBITION AGAINST FEDERAL FUNDING OF UNIVERSAL OR MANDATORY
MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING.
(a) Universal or Mandatory Mental Health Screening Program.--No
Federal funds may be used to establish or implement any universal or
mandatory mental health, psychiatric, or socioemotional screening
program.
(b) Refusal To Consent as Basis of a Charge of Child Abuse or
Education Neglect.--No Federal education funds may be paid to any local
educational agency or other instrument of government that uses the
refusal of a parent or legal guardian to provide express, written,
voluntary, informed consent to mental health screening for his or her
child as the basis of a charge of child abuse, child neglect, medical
neglect, or education neglect until the agency or instrument
demonstrates that it is no longer using such refusal as a basis of such
a charge.
(c) Definition.--For purposes of this Act, the term ``universal or
mandatory mental health, psychiatric, or socioemotional screening
program''--
(1) means any mental health screening program in which a
set of individuals (other than members of the Armed Forces or
individuals serving a sentence resulting from conviction for a
criminal offense) is automatically screened without regard to
whether there was a prior indication of a need for mental
health treatment; and
(2) includes--
(A) any program of State incentive grants for
transformation to implement recommendations in the July
2003 report of the New Freedom Commission on Mental
Health, the State Early Childhood Comprehensive System,
grants for TeenScreen, and the Foundations for Learning
Grants; and
(B) any student mental health screening program
that allows mental health screening of individuals
under 18 years of age without the express, written,
voluntary, informed consent of the parent or legal
guardian of the individual involved.
<all>
Introduced in House
Introduced in House
Sponsor introductory remarks on measure. (CR E1476-1477)
Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on Ways and Means, and Education and the Workforce, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on Ways and Means, and Education and the Workforce, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on Ways and Means, and Education and the Workforce, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Referred to the Subcommittee on Health.
Referred to the Subcommittee on Health.
Referred to the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education.
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