Oppose Discriminatory Mental
Screening of Poor Children!
Senate
file 148, authored by
Senator John Marty,
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still contains the pilot program that seeks to psychiatrically screen
the children of those receiving benefits through the Minnesota Family
Investment Program. An effort was made by
Senator Betsy
Wergin to delete the mental screening part of that pilot program when
the bill was heard in the policy committee, but it failed on a close
vote. (See
our March 2nd update)
Besides
making discriminatory and stigmatizing assumptions about how poor
people raise their children, screening in this
program has many problems:
- Screening will lead to more drugging of poor and minority children
than is already happening.
- According to a study by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry, 90% of children who see a psychiatrist will receive
medication.
- 2.5 million children are receiving antipsychotic medications, the
most powerful psychiatric medications, many with no clinical
justification, starting as young as 18 months old.
- Poor children on government programs like Medicaid are more likely to
receive the strongest antipsychotic drugs compared to children with
private insurance.
- Two thirds of foster children in Massachusetts, 55% in Florida and
over 50% in Texas are receiving psychotropic drugs, up to 16 drugs
starting as young as age three.
- According to a study from New York cited by the NAACP, minority male
students 11 times more likely to be on psychotropic meds than white
students
- Most psychiatric drugs, especially the antipsychotics, are not
approved for children.
- Experts do not agree on the criteria for the actual diseases, much
less a screening survey.
- The commonly used screening instruments have very high false positive
rates for screening in the range of 73 84%.
Consent for screening does not make this program acceptable. An offer to
be in the pilot program is triggered by an examination of financial and
other MFIP data. There is no consent for that data being examined. The
consent for screening is not informed consent, such as: what happens to
their childs data; what is the rate of false positives of the screening;
what happens if the child screens positive, what is the potential for
medication, what are the side effects of medication, what are the
non-drug treatment alternatives, etc.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Please oppose this expansion of child psychiatric screening in
Minnesota.
Poor and vulnerable populations with less wherewithal to fight back are
always used as the guinea pigs for these kinds of intrusive and
ineffective programs.
Call / e-mail members of this committee
MESSAGE:
Do not expand mental screening for Minnesotas
poor children or for any children.
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