[Congressional Bills 112th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1800 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

112th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 1800

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


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                            November 3, 2011

   Mr. Paul introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
  referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 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.
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