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“Should We Be Drugging Our Children?”
Angel Femia
I have found a great deal of information on the subject of using psychiatric drugs on children diagnosed with learning disabilities,
ADHD aka Attention Deficit Hyper Disorder,ADD aka Attention Deficit Disorder and other emotional illnesses children are most
times left with, due to abuse.
I was put on some of these drugs, by my doctors, as a child and was completely addicted to prescribed meds until I was twenty-six
years old. Most of my childhood and young adult life was hideously destroyed due to this.
Anyone who has already gone through {“the legal drug addiction scene”}-{which is almost half of my generation,}
knows that these drugs are worse then we had even dreamed. Most of us have lost major parts of our lives and spent the better
part of the remainder of their live working non- stop to repair the damage done by this type of treatment.
After enduring this hell life on meds, I can honestly say that it is abuse to medicated a person, child or otherwise, without
true understanding of the illness being treated, insufficient information on the effects of the drugs being prescribed, or
when there is alternative treatments that will be safer and much more effective.
Another problem I have found is that education systems and governments are actually making medical decisions that they truly
have no right to make. They are plantations, business men, not doctors and do not know any of the children being treated,
first hand, or the issues these children and heir parents live with daily.
I do not believe that government should have any right to allow charges to be laid on parents who do not put their children
on prescribed drugs, just because the education systems guidelines demand such action. This is also happening right now in
the United States.
Below is a report, by Christine Hall, sent to me from an Internet news medium.
The information in this report is very detailed on the matters above.
“Please read this carefully, especially if you have children with these problems or are dealing daily with children,
teens or adults with these issues.”
Special Ed Law Encourages 'Psychiatric Drugging' of Kids, Say Critics
By Christine Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
March 04, 2002
(CNSNews.com) - With Congress scheduled to debate a controversial special education law this year, a California group and
a handful of celebrity activists are pointing to what they see as the law's incentives for the "psychiatric drugging of children."
"Why are we pouring billions of dollars in here to label kids as mental disordered simply because they may not have been taught
to read?" asks Marla Filidei, vice president of the Los Angeles-based Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a group affiliated
with the Church of Scientology.
Filidei counts actresses Anne Archer, Priscilla Presley and Kirsty Alley as allies in the fight against giving children mood
or personality-altering prescription drugs like Prozac and Ritalin.
Because of federal incentives, school systems are diagnosing kids with "subjective" disabilities that have no relation to
any identifiable physical disability or impediment, Filidei said. In return, she added, school systems get more federal tax
dollars for every kid they add to special education programs.
While students with severe disabilities are expensive to educate, Filidei suggested, many students who are falsely diagnosed
with mental disorders represent a potential financial gain to a school system.
Others take issue with Filidei's claims. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights "have been generally opposed to psychiatry
for some time" because of their Scientology roots, according to Dr. David Fassler, M.D., of the University of Vermont. "There's
a long history."
When it comes to diagnosing mental illness and disorders in kids, "I actually see the opposite problem, that the majority
of kids who have problems are not being diagnosed and getting the help they need," said Fassler. "I don't think that there
are incentives in the legislation, and I don't see schools over-diagnosing kids.
"Medication can be very helpful and even life-saving for some children," he added. "But in my opinion, medication alone is
rarely an appropriate treatment for these kinds of child psychiatric disorders."
Bruce Hunter, a lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators, disputes the notion that special education
students provide a school system with the opportunity of financial gain. Rather, said Hunter, it's a money-losing proposition
because federal law requires the school system to pay for medical diagnoses that, alone, cost more per pupil than the check
from the federal government.
However, said Hunter, "there are school systems where kids are being over-medicated. As an association, we've been concerned
about that for years."
Like Filidei, Hunter hopes the federal education law will be modified this year to give school systems more flexibility in
how to administer special education programs and make procedures "less adversarial" between the school system and the parent.
Over the past few years, there have been some well-publicized instances of parents experiencing pressure and even legal action
from school systems and child protective services to put a child on certain prescription drugs.
Jill and Michael Carroll from New York State were reportedly pressured by a school, child protective services and a judge
to comply with a psychologist's order to put their seven-year-old son on Ritalin. The Carrolls said they complied with the
order out of fear that they would lose custody of their child.
"The Ritalin affected his appetite, and his parents took him off," said the Carrolls' attorney Chris Weddle in a 2000 interview.
"The Department of Social Services filed charges against them for educational neglect."
The federal law that Filidei identifies as a major part of the problem is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA). Since its inception in 1975, Congress has expanded the scope of the IDEA to include a broader range of disabilities,
including more recent conditions like attention deficit disorder (ADD). The law requires schools to provide special education
services for disabled students and sends $50 billion per year in federal tax dollars to help cover the extra cost.
According to Filidei, of the 5 million plus kids who are now covered under IDEA, 3.2 million have what Filidei calls "subjective
learning disorders."
"If no one can prove any physical abnormality within these children, you give them 'mathematics disorder,' 'learning disorder,'
'nonspecific learning disorder;' Filidei said. "Two-point-eight million children are categorized under nonspecific learning
disorder."
Dealing with IDEA mandates has also become a problem for school administrators and school budgets.
President Bush has appointed a commission to discuss possible changes to the IDEA. The commission is scheduled to release
its recommendations by July 1.
In January, the president called for an extra $1 billion in funding for the IDEA, but his education secretary has raised concerns
about the increasing number of kids who are listed as disabled and called for changes in the IDEA.
"Not only does it hurt those children who are misidentified, it also reduces the resources available to serve children with
disabilities," U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige said during a Houston speech.
Paige, like other special education critics, also lamented what he called the "disproportionate enrollment of minority kids"
in special education.
According to a recent study by the National Academies, more than twice as many black children are labeled mentally retarded
as white children. And about 1.5 percent of black children are diagnosed as emotionally disturbed, compared to only 0.9 percent
of white children.
Congress faces a difficult task when it takes up reauthorization of IDEA this year. The IDEA has been the subject of heated
fights over the years because it has never fully funded the mandate it imposes on state and local governments. Sen. James
Jeffords (I-Vt.) cited the lack of funding as one of his primary reasons for leaving the Republican Party in 2001, a decision
that cost the GOP control of the Senate.
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