Teenscreen: Adolescent suicide and mental health screening programs

TeenScreen is a very controversial so-called “diagnostic psychiatric service” aka suicide survey; done on children who are then referred to psychiatric treatment. The evidence suggests that the objective of the psychiatrists who designed TeenScreen is to place children so selected on psychotropic drugs.

“It’s just a way to put more people on prescription drugs,” said Marcia Angell, a medical ethics lecturer at Harvard Medical School and author of “The Truth About Drug Companies.” She said such programs will boost the sale of antidepressants even after the FDA in September ordered a “black box” label warning that the pills might spur suicidal thoughts or actions in minors. (The New York Post, December 5, 2004)

Critical reading for anyone concerned about this situation – click on the link above for much more information.

This entry was posted on December 1, 2005 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.