We’ve all heard of “urban sprawl.” But there is another kind of “sprawl” Americans should find more worrisome: legislative sprawl.

Mental health parity is one such example. Government-mandated parity of mental and physical ailments for insurance coverage is a back-door route to nationalized health care. Special interests have been pushing government to implement parity for years and last Friday, January 29, the Obama Administration acquiesced. Health plans will henceforth be required to provide (not merely “offer”) mental-health benefits that contain no zingers, such as separate annual deductibles or lesser rates for psychiatrists and social workers.  Instead, according to Andrew Sperling of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), health insurers will be obliged to give the same level of coverage for treatment of emotional angst “as they do for cancer, diabetes and heart disease.”

Mental health has morphed into a cottage industry with scores of advocating organizations and lobbyists — NAMI, the American Psychiatric Association, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (CHADD), the National Education Association and, of course, pharmaceutical companies. Industry bigwigs have repeatedly insisted that mental-health issues are no different than physical illnesses. The problem is that one cannot verify a mental illness — not with an X-ray, a blood test, a urinalysis or by any other means. Unlike brain injuries, Alzheimer’s and other clear-cut brain impairments due to strokes, high fevers and birth defects, mental illness per se is purely subjective. Perhaps someday researchers will discover issues at the cellular level that definitively cause a certain subset of behaviors, or which exacerbate stress, but at the moment they cannot. So it is no wonder that the various medications and therapies directed at curing, or even alleviating, emotional distress have virtually no track record of success.

In fact, many are suspected of doing harm, as reflected in the increasing number of “black box” warning labels, both on drug packaging and in TV advertisements. Amazingly, the mental health industry has managed to exempt itself from charges of complicity and fraud.  Worse, it has inserted itself into every aspect of our lives and repeated its claims to the point where they are viewed as unassailable — so much so that it actually fuels political-correctness. Unsurprisingly, the Obama Administration has failed to address the problem; seats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a post-9/11 entity aimed at safeguarding Americans against politically motivated intrusiveness, remain unfilled.

Parents fear charges of negligence when they refuse to place toddlers on psychiatric cocktails; the criminal “justice” system recycles thousands of violent criminals back into society at the hands of mental health therapists; hundreds of thousands of citizens are left permanently harmed, thanks to the inevitable side-effects of psychotropic substances that fail to alleviate their symptoms anyway.

Nevertheless, advertisers hawk products that purportedly lessen emotional distress by increasing or blocking serotonin levels. But they never say how much serotonin is too much, how much is not enough, or how much is just right.

It’s enough to make one crazy; indeed, several therapies and drugs are doing just that!  Psychotropic drugs are suspected of being complicit in suicides, hyper-aggressive acts and other bizarre behaviors that have recently rocked the nation.

Now, some 140 million Americans in more than 450,000 employer plans are set to “benefit” from the new coverage mandate, as reported in The Washington Times and other outlets. The Congressional Budget Office has concluded the law would raise costs only slightly — less than half of 1 percent for employers — which implies a negligible increase. Even if it were “negligible,” which it is not, given the already hefty premiums we pay, the figure will no more remain at 1 percent than the cost of Medicare and Medicaid has remained static since their inception.

There are some 9 million American youngsters on psychiatric drugs, 4 million of them stimulants more potent than cocaine. Young learners are screened for maladies that don’t exist, fraudulently labeled with ADD-ADHD and all manner of “learning disorders,” all supposedly controllable with mind-altering drugs, as opposed discipline and educational solutions. Our anti-drug-abuse messages to young people are being contradicted by legislative decree, in the interest of massive health-care reform and identifying potential troublemakers.

The federally funded New Freedom Commission on Mental Health recommended in 2002 that all schoolchildren be screened for mental disorders based on a manual that even experts say is unreliable and unscientific, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Illness (or DSM). The resulting New Freedom Initiative, with copycat bills in nearly every state, constitutes “legislative sprawl” at its worst.  Together, these federal and state bills mandate the screening of every man, woman and child in America — ostensibly to identify those predisposed to mental illness and criminality. But neither mental illnesses nor “criminal genes” can be scientifically validated, so attempts to screen for predisposition are doomed.

Mental-health screening bills do accomplish a few things, however: none of them good. They undermine the authority of parents, drive a wedge between family members, exacerbate children’s physical well-being through unnecessary drugging, and compromise adult guidance and leadership roles.

Who’s profiting from this excess? Certainly not children — or their parents and teachers, judging from news and police reports!

Take the December 2006 death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley in Hull, Massachusetts: She was found dead on the floor following what at first appeared to be limited to an overdose of clonidine, prescribed by a psychiatrist. It turned out that during her brief life, she had been prescribed three psychiatric drugs by Dr. Kayoko Kifuji of Tufts Medical Center – the psychiatrist for all three of the Riley children. The girl had been diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder at age 2, and then shortly after she was 3, with bipolar disorder. Then it was discovered that all three of the Riley youngsters had been diagnosed with bipolar and hyperactivity disorders — a which rather strains credibility. Upon Rebecca’s death, her parents (in particular her 35-year-old mother, Carolyn) were charged with deliberately overdosing the toddler, and fabricating behavioral problems to receive disability payments.

But the allegations begged a larger question: What was a 2-year-old doing on powerful drugs like clonidine and Depakote, substances many adults can’t handle? Isn’t a doctor supposed to be able to tell when ailments are being exaggerated?

Not in psychiatry. Why? Because the maladies are subjective to begin with! How does a doctor prove a parent is lying about behavior problems? One clue might be the number of refills and requests for higher dosages. But upping dosages doesn’t seem to faze mental-health “professionals.”

Retired pediatric neurologist and author, Fred Baughman, points out that legislation which subsidizes disability payments to parents (or, for that matter, to school districts) increases the risk of overmedicating children. What the parents should have done, he says, is to have questioned the bipolar diagnosis for a 2-year-old. Such diagnostic labels, he says, are “handed out like candy.”

It is far too easy,” says Dr. Baughman, “to label any kid or adult with one of 374 ‘disorders’. When a disease can be invented merely by voting [on it], 100 percent of [the diagnostic] positives are [in reality] ‘false positives’.”

Dr. Baughman explains how legislation that provides a monthly, financial incentive to drug children creates more problems than it solves:

When parents are paid $600 cash per month by the state to have their child diagnosed as ‘disabled', some parents will be very happy when a diagnosis is made. Who are the parents to question the ‘expert’? I wonder how many kids go in for an ‘evaluation’ without coming out with a diagnosis? I would guess zero. [M]y math shows a 1,122-percent probability of getting a diagnosis whenever anyone goes into a psychologist’s office. In fact, I [would] bet there is no code for ‘normal’ on their billing sheets.  The state, in effect, killed [Rebecca Riley] by paying the parents cash in exchange for allowing psychiatrists to diagnose their child. If they [had] paid them $600 not to label and drug their kid, she would still be alive.

The Riley case aside, most people are not versed in risk-to-benefit ratios; nor do they keep up with which medications “mix” and which medications don’t. When they get stressed, they often panic, can’t get through to their doctors or the pharmacy, and make mistakes.

A recent review of school violence and shootings since 1988 — just one year after Prozac came on the market — reveals that 38 percent were taking psychiatric drugs, nearly half of them antidepressants, often with an antipsychotic and a tranquilizer thrown in for good measure.  Consider: If antidepressants are known to cause sexual dysfunction in almost 90 percent of adults, then what does it do to the pre-pubescent or hormone-raging adolescent?

Further obscuring the lines between bona fide diseases and trumped-up labels, the DSM, along with other mental-health literature, increasingly mix real and invalid brain disorders, such as depression and narcolepsy. The latter, narcolepsy, is a confirmable condition. But no physical abnormality has been identified to explain depression. An educated person, seeing both conditions labeled as disorders in the same text, jumps to the conclusion that each is equally valid.

The new parity rules prohibit insurance companies from setting limits on the number of visits or hospital stays for mental health issues. The preferred drug-du jour gets a boost, inasmuch as new psychotropic drugs keep popping up for the same ailment (sometimes as an add-on, as in Abilify, for depression).

Moreover, mandated parity for mental “illness” will wind up legitimizing as diseases the normal ups and downs of daily life, killing or maiming more people than it helps. Parity is an audacious attempt to expand the nanny state and, as such, represents a classic example of “legislative sprawl.”


Beverly K. Eakman is a former educator and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies as well as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper (Johnson Space Center).  Today, she is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer, the author of five books, and a frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks (Midnight Whistler Publishers).

 

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RP said:

... Psychiatry is like anthropogenic global warming... it is junk pseudo-science. Freud was a fraud. The biggest beneficiaries of psychiatry are pharmaceutical companies. Big government also finds it useful to have a populace hooked on mind altering drugs. They are easier to manipulate. CHADD and ADHD can be attributed in large part to children being children. In other cases, it is nothing a reduction in soda and sugar can't alleviate. In still other cases, the best cure is a hard whack on the backside. Depression? In large part (and I expect to see a lot of negatives on this one), DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE! No, not ALWAYS, but most of the time. People will be depressed for as long as they WANT to be depressed. I always have to laugh when it has to be advertised that a side effect of anti-depressant medications is suicide!

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February 02, 2010
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DDW said:

	Well put, RP You took everysingle word right out of my mouth.
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February 02, 2010
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Jane Dun said:

	... So glad to see that the black-and-white, oversimplified, all-or-nothing, and grossly ignorant sort of thinking is not confined to the individuals, families, and organizations criticized by this article! Well done!
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February 03, 2010
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Rosiecee said:

Mandating Mental Health Coverage The Physicians Desk Reference states that SSRI antidepressants and all antidepressants can cause mania, psychosis, abnormal thinking, paranoia, hostility, etc. These side effects can also appear during withdrawal. Also, these adverse reactions are not listed as Rare but are listed as either Frequent or Infrequent. Go to www.SSRIstories.com where there are over 3,600 cases, with the full media article available, involving bizarre murders, suicides, school shootings/incidents [52 of these] and murder-suicides - all of which involve SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, etc, . The media article usually tells which SSRI antidepressant the perpetrator was taking or had been using.

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February 03, 2010 | url
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Bruce Clark said:

	... Global warming is real. Someone would have to keep their head buried or strictly listen to Right-wing media to think otherwise. But inclusion of mental health care into real issues of common good brings in, not only the loonies, but big pharma and the plutocracy who would keep "We the people" suppressed for the sake of their own coffers.
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February 03, 2010
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Jane Dun said:

... Mr. Clark: I agree. But Ms. Eakman and her followers, it seems, would have us deny treatment which could be truly beneficial to children who truly need it, whose parents have tried every therapeutic, nutritional, and environmental intervention possible--to no avail--just to spite big pharma. I'm all for sticking it to the big drug companies, but not if it means condemning a child to mental illness. From the information available, the Riley case combines awful parents with an unprofessional doctor (I've never heard of a responsible dr. diagnosing a 2-year-old with ADHD or a 3-year-old with bipolar, much less prescribing meds for such). It shouldn't be used as a representative case.

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February 05, 2010
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Cindy Brown said:

... The tragic results of treating the soul like it's a body part hits very close to home for me. Many of my relatives are on medication for depression and panic attacks or sleep problems. I am convinced that if they would eat right and exercise and participate in supportive relationships,(with God first) most of their mental issues would evaporate. It's hard to watch people you love live this way.

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February 06, 2010
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etnajames said:

... You have obviously never known a person or loved a person struck with a serious mental illness. How would you like a manic or schizophrenic child who was not covered by insurance? How about denying coverage for lung cancer if the patient smoked or denying coverage for a heart attack treatment for an obese person. They had choices. A person struck by a severe mental illness had no choice. More and more research show it is a defect of neurotransmitters, ie a malfunction of the brain. Hoping mentally ill people will recover without medical treatment is like expecting people to recover from diabetes or cancer without treatment. I also see you are a retired federal worker. I'll bet you have no worries what so ever about insurance coverage. The abuse of the health system by people claiming disabilities that are non existent certainly is no more so in mental health than any other injury or illness.

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February 06, 2010
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Frank Lee said:

Quoting Fred Baughman? LOLOLOLOL!!! Go back into your cave, Ms. Eakman. You are way out of your depth. Moreover, you don't have a clue about mental illness in this country and the problems getting treatment. In fact, groups like the John Birch Society and the Scientologists have much in common: they're both whacko organizations where whackos congregate and tell each other they're not whacko. Sick sick people.

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February 10, 2010 | url
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Frank Lee said:

Rebecca Riley Jane -- Sorry but you need to learn more about the tragic case of Rebecca Riley. In fact, the parents gave the child outrageous doses on cold medications (which kill children every year) on top of psychotropic medication. Bi-polar disorder is highly genetic, and that means it's not something you "develop" over time. Some psychiatric illnesses have a late onset, often the catalyst is hormones, such as schizophrenia. But bi-polar can be present in young children. The biggest problem here is that that child was not taken away from parents who had a track record of being unfit. Unfortunately, it is hard to prove that, and the overly liberal social workers who manage these things in society tend to think that everything can be cured with "talk." ha!

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February 10, 2010 | url
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Jane Dun said:

... Frank-- I was unclear in my earlier posting. When I referred to parents who have tried every non-pharmaceutical sort of intervention, I wasn't referring to the Rileys. I was referring to myself. And I'm painfully aware that bipolar is genetic and doesn't develop over time. My earlier message shouldn't have implied that. My characterization of the dr. as unprofessional for diagnosing bipolar in a 2-year-old was not a suggestion that children cannot manifest the symptoms of bipolar at that young age. It's just that those symptoms can so closely match symptoms of _other_ diseases or disorders--ADHD, PDD, SPD, for starters--that it wouldn't be very responsible to jump immediately to a bipolar diagnosis and bipolar meds. As to whether all social workers are "liberal" or "believe everything can be cured with talk," I simply don't have the knowledge or experience to comment.

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February 11, 2010
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