[Congressional Bills 108th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 5236 Introduced in House (IH)]






108th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 5236

  To prohibit the use of Federal funds for any universal or mandatory 
                    mental health screening program.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                            October 6, 2004

   Mr. Paul introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on 
  Education and the Workforce and Ways and Means, 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 ``Let Parents Raise Their Kids Act of 
2004''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    The Congress finds as follows:
            (1) The United States Preventive Services Task Force 
        (USPSTF) issued findings and recommendation 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) The Surgeon General's report also says, ``The diagnosis 
        of mental disorders is often believed to be more difficult than 
        diagnosis of somatic or general medical disorders since there 
        is no definitive laboratory test or abnormality in brain tissue 
        that can identify the illness.''.
            (4) Accurate mental health diagnosis of children is 
        difficult as admitted by the Surgeon General's report that 
        says, ``The science is challenging because of the ongoing 
        process of development. The normally developing child hardly 
        stays the same long enough to make stable measurements. Adult 
        criteria for illness can be difficult to apply to children and 
        adolescents, when the signs and symptoms of mental disorders 
        are often also the characteristics of normal development.''.
            (5) 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).
            (6) 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.
            (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) A 300-percent increase in psychotropic drug use 
                in 2 to 4 year old children from 1991 to 1995 (Journal 
                of the American Medical Association, 2000).
                    (B) A 300-percent increase in psychotropic drug use 
                in children from 1987 to 1996 (Archives of Pediatric & 
                Adolescent Medicine, 2003).
                    (C) More money was spent on psychiatric drugs for 
                children than on antibiotics or asthma medication 
                (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 
        in September 2004, that the newer antidepressants are related 
        to suicidal thoughts and actions in children and that this data 
        was hidden for years. The Food and Drug Administration had over 
        2000 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 President's 
        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 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 or education neglect 
until the agency or instrument demonstrates that it is no longer using 
such refusal as a basis of a child abuse or education neglect charge.
    (c) Definition.--For purposes of this Act, the term ``universal or 
mandatory mental health 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 President's New Freedom Commission 
                on Mental Health; 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.
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