a highly controversial, aggressive, medically dubious mental health screening protocol targeting school children as a means to inflate mental health client base by mislabeling normal children as mentally ill using a manipulative 10-minute test, ultimately to increase Big Pharma budgets and profits. The program ended in 2012. It was developed with federal funding by Dr. David Shaffer, chief of child psychiatry at Columbia University, and was administered by Laurie Flynn, former Executive Director of NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) who ushered in the pharmaceutical take-over of the organization. From its inception, TeenScreen was a ‘flawed’ (or more likely highly effective Big Pharma manipulation) tool that misidentified 83% of the time, normal adolescents as having undiagnosed mental illnesses which (it was claimed) put them at risk of suicide. In 2004, Dr. Shaffer acknowledged in his published article that “in practice a specificity of 0.83 would deliver many who were not at risk for suicide, and that could reduce the acceptability of a school-based prevention program.” See Ref 7
One of the questions asked in the manipulative survey for children was: “Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good-looking or smart as other people?” Another question was: “In the last year, has there been any situation when you had less energy than usual?”
Despite its acknowledged unreliability as a screening tool, President Bush’s New Freedom Commission for Mental Health recommended (in 2003) the use of TeenScreen for all school-aged children in the 50 states. According to IMS Health, sales of antidepressants in the United States rose dramatically after 2003, surpassing $11 billion in 2010. The NFC also recommended adhering to the TMAP mental health prescribing guidelines (TMAP = Texas Medication Algorithm Project). TMAP was exposed as an industry-initiated marketing scam by Allen Jones, a whistleblower who uncovered the evidence of corrupt marketing practices – including fraudulent claims of safety and efficacy, and kickbacks to government officials and prominent academic psychiatrists that let to the meteoric profits generated TMAP.
In essence, these two radical “test and treat” protocols vastly increased the client roster for Big Pharma and mental health providers, providing cover for an unconscionable, ruthless business model.
TeenScreen facilitated a steady flow of adolescents deemed “at risk” who would be prescribed psychotropic drugs recommended by the TMAP Guidelines. These highly toxic drugs carry Black Box label warnings because they have been linked to irreversible, debilitating, chronic or fatal injury in patients at normal prescribed doses. To combat the adverse effects of any one of these drugs led to prescribing additional drugs (drug cocktails) ensuring life-long psychotropic drug dependence.
Sources:
- https://ahrp.org/teenscreen-operations-have-shut-down/
- https://www.sonsoflibertyradio.com/bradlee-dean/the-dean/school-shooters-and-pharmaceuticals.html
