French Revolt Over "Delinquency Prevention" Tests of 3-Yr- org/2006Oct14conf.htm">Minority and Low-income Families as Psychiatric Guinea Pigs" )

Drugs as a cure-all
A Petition was circulated, as a response to the French recommendations, which immediately drew almost 200,000 signatures. The following is excerpted from the petition:

"A child displaying any of these symptoms would be subjected to a battery of tests. These tests, developed on the basis of behavioural neuropsychological theories, would make it possible to detect any deviation from the standard, according to the criteria established in Anglo-Saxon scientific literature. In adhering to such a deterministic approach and applying a rigid one-dimensional principle, a child's smallest gesture or mischievousness could be interpreted as a manifestation of a pathological personality.

"This condition would thus necessitate immediate neutralization with a series of steps combining re-education and psychotherapy. Starting at the age of six, the administration of medication, psychostimulants and thymoregulators should succeed in controlling the most recalcitrant cases.

"However, if these recommendations are implemented, wouldn't they promote the homogenisation of children's behaviour or provoke a form of child drug addiction, not to mention overburden treatment centres responsible for curing all these sociopathies? By advocating the idea of drugs as a cure-all for educational, psychological and social phenomena, the INSERM report fosters the confusion between social inadaptability and psychic suffering, or even hereditary illnesses. If every manifestation of opposition, inherent to a child's psychic development, is automatically labelled as 'pathological', if symptoms are taken out of their individual contexts and considered to be predictive factors of delinquency, it makes it impossible to consider each human being's development as being unique."

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The Dangers of Mental Health Screening Briefing Book  by Karen R. Effrem, M.D.
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