Mental Health Awareness: Wanted Compassion and Understanding

By: Elise Ronan | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel

Impressions we make are essential to how we view each other. Social awareness, some call it mindfulness, of the unsaid signals we emit are part and parcel of human interactions. But what happens when a person doesn’t understand the nuances and the secret handshake of unwritten social rules? What happens when these people become so overwhelmed by their environment that they exhibit actions, such as a meltdown, inappropriate yelling – laughing, or experience a panic attack complete with hysterics and uncontrollable crying?

It’s one thing if the helpless person involved is a child. Most of society has all sorts of qualifiers for a child that has issues and mental health concerns. But, as a person ages, society’s tolerance for such actions not only becomes mute, but in most part disappears altogether. Mental illness becomes an unspoken burden in part because it is sadly ignored,  swept away by families due to societal derision. As a person ages the stigma associated with mental illness becomes as much of a weight as the illness itself.

Society lacks basic knowledge about mental health issues. And in many ways tabloid journalism is to blame. The issues are sensationalized, especially when a violent individual commits some unspeakable crimes. (Ignoring the fact that most heinous crimes are actually committed by person considered sane.)The news will drone on and on about a subject that they know nothing about, simply making life unbearable for those already viewed to live on the fringes of society. The uneducated make conjectures, elicit ignorant opinions and promote fear instead of trying to enunciate understanding of what mental illness is and what it is not.

-Mental illness covers a wide range of illnesses. HERE Everything from ADD to autism to panic attacks to PTSD to the more severe forms of schizophrenia.

-The overwhelmingly vast majority of persons with mental illness are NOT violent. In fact they are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the perpetrator. HERE

-With help recovery is possible. HERE

It is important to remember that those with mental health illnesses are trying their best. What they need is understanding and acceptance. We can talk about accommodations and we can talk about civil rights until we are  “blue in the face,” but in truth, if someone is uncomfortable around a person with a mental illness, there will never be friends, employment and a successful navigation of society. Can comfort be taught? Can compassion become part and parcel of society?

First, what society needs to understand is that meltdowns, panic attacks, “episodes” are personal to the person. It is how the effected individual is feeling at that one given moment in time. Their being overwhelmed is about how they are processing the sensory information before them. They are in that space and they cannot necessarily remove themselves from that tornado that is their mind. (And as I have said before this inability to see beyond themselves-mindblindness- becomes more problematic as a person ages. A meltdown by a 10-year-old is taken alot differently than a meltdown by a 200 pound, 6 foot tall, grown-adult-male.) HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE

Second, yes, once their “episode” is over, they are capable of understanding what has happened. They realize, once they feel better, if they have been mean, cross or had been inappropriate. “I’m sorry,” is something heartfelt. Apologies abound. They truly feel embarrassed when they have digressed in the presence of their peers and they truly feel shame.

But unfortunately if their actions have frightened someone, scared off a potential friend, or have lost them a job, sometimes there really is no going back. What is lost is lost. The question becomes how do you teach them to understand their feelings in the moment and to control themselves? How do you teach them that impressions are real and that they have consequences before these consequences are life effecting?

Lastly, so what is a parent or caregiver to do? It is trying to teach the idea  that it is the little things that become important when talking about perception. It is the little things that become important when preparing someone for the future.

Walking out of a room, class or environment when they start to feel overwhelmed is a typical self-help method. (Making sure that they leave the room before they exhibit any negative actions is important also, and part of a long process of education.) Trying to get them to understand that their “tone” in a conversation is essential to how their emotional state is perceived is important for social interactions at both school and work. Teaching them the appropriate way to horse-around (even though it seems that in a school setting typical male bonding is seen as anathema in the first place in today’s world) and what to say as a “joke” in public is a good place to start, when teaching about community acceptance. Getting them to understand the necessity of therapy and medication to their own well-being. Promoting a healthy attitude towards exercise, food and self-care can also help in their navigation of the world.

But in the end we do need to accept the fact that there is also just so much anyone person can do to accommodate the world-at-large as well. We also need to understand that no matter how hard those with mental health issues do try, there is always going to be that one person who is just totally unaccepting towards them. This person will, no matter what, never forgive the ill for who they are. They will never see beyond the disability or mental health issue. Honestly, its better to teach the effected individual how to identify these antagonistic people and to just stay away from them. You can’t please everyone and honestly it’s not even worth trying.

As I have always taught my children this primary life lesson…wherever you go in life there is always going to be one “shmendrick.” The trick in life is to NOT be the “shmendrick.” That is basically impressions in a nutshell. That is the basic goal of those with challenges.

In the meantime, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Maybe one day there will be more give and take with society. Maybe one day the partnership will actually be 50-50. But until that time we work, we teach and we hope that the stigma of mental illness will be lifted and those that are forced onto the fringes of society will be accepted, understood and welcomed into the world inwhich they live.

Technorati Tags: Mental Illness,Mental Disorders,Awareness,Understanding,Compassion,Mental Health Awareness Month,May,Mind

Remember 'The Girls' - Views by Ann Hood

Photo: Tim Klein/Gallery Stock

Parade:  Loyal, loud, tough-talking—these were friends impossible to replace.

Every Friday night, they gathered at one of their houses in a cloud of cigarette smoke and Aqua Net. They came in twos or threes, dressed in velour sweat suits, skirts with matching sweaters, elastic-waist jeans, and shirts that said BEST MOM or DECK THE HALLS. In their hands: coffee cans filled with pennies that clanked as they walked. Some wore wigs, big bubbles of fake hair. Or wiglets or falls, bobby-pinned in place like the mantillas they wore to church on Sunday. There were 12 in all. The Dirty Dozen, they called themselves. But more often, they were just The Girls.

Most had grown up together in Natick, R.I., a small village in a small state. Their houses all sat within a mile of each other. Yet they arrived in station wagons, the ones they drove to and from school, the beach, and the park, overloaded with kids.

Their husbands were foremen in factories. Others worked on the army base or ran the produce department or the deli counter at the local store. One of The Girls—no one could remember how she came to join them—was married to a doctor. She wore a blond fall, cat-eye glasses, drank Chablis. She didn't fit in, really. The Girls married young and stayed married. This one had an affair and left town. Then they were 11 around the kitchen tables covered with plastic cloths.
My mother was part of this group. For as long as I can remember, Friday nights were sacred, hers. The hurried dinner—maybe tuna casserole, eggs in purgatory, fish and chips from the takeout place. Then her disappearance to get ready. She left my father in charge for the evening, which meant popcorn and Dr. Pepper and staying up late. But never late enough for me to hear her come home.

Best was when it was my mother's turn to host. She began cooking on Wednesday. Marinating. Peeling. Simmering. Friday we were banished to the TV room so she could set up metal trays with small bowls of chips and dip, platters of cold cuts or fried chicken or meat loaf. Always a salad. Always cake or pie.

On my mother's nights, it was impossible to fall asleep. The excitement of The Girls, so many of them! All squeezed around our small table, laughing and smoking and playing poker. I would creep down the stairs and sit on the harvest gold carpet, listening. They shared worries: about husbands and children and money, always money because there was never enough. They told each other "I hate you" and "I love you" with equal passion and frequency. They were not like mothers on television. No, they were rough around the edges, high school dropouts, secretaries, and assembly-line workers. They spoke with a hard accent that dropped r's and added s's. Kmahts, they said, instead of Kmart. "Your deals" instead of "your deal."

Years of Friday nights passed. Three of The Girls moved away. Then cancer struck. Colon. Lung, twice. The Girls dwindled from 11 to eight to five. Alzheimer's dropped them to four. They broke hips and had cataract surgeries, knee replacements, and lumpectomies. Still, they met every Friday night.

After their families were grown, they took trips. To Atlantic City. To Foxwoods casino in Connecticut. Overnights and weekends and afternoons. They met for coffee and counted their pennies and planned more trips to more casinos.

Then one day, one of them was driving home from my mother's when she was hit broadside by a teenager in his brand-new car. She died instantly. That Friday was the first Friday that The Girls didn't play. The next week, another one was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer; she lived only four months.

Unsure how to help my mother heal, I signed us up for bridge classes with my 19-year-old son. I imagined finding a fourth player, setting a new routine. I imagined I could convince her that things weren't as bad as they seemed, even though I knew they were.

The day before the last class, the teacher announced that we were all bridge players now. "You can go home and teach your friends," he said triumphantly.

"My friends are all dead," my mother said softly.

I glanced over at her. She had turned her head so that no one could see her crying. How foolish I was to think that a new foursome, could replace The Girls. I realized in that moment that there are some things for which there are no substitutes. There are some things that we must mourn and cherish and say goodbye to.

Every so often now, on a Friday night, I drive to my mother's. I bring her treats that make her smile: a bouquet of zinnias, an apple pie warm from the oven, a bunch of flat-leaf parsley. I drink coffee with her and talk about things that don't matter. She'll look around the empty table and say, in a voice filled with wonder, "Just yesterday, we were all here playing cards." I take her hand, bent with arthritis, rough from hard work, and I hold on tight. Or as tight as I can before I let go.

By Ann Hood  Her new novel: The Obituary Writer.

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Technorati Tags: friends,friendship,Seniors,Mental Health,girlfriends

Mental Health Group Looks to Remove Stigma From Pedophilia… Really?

Mental Health Group Looks to Remove Stigma From Pedophilia

Fox News:  Originally Published August 24, 2011

A group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals say it's time to change the way society views individuals who have physical attractions to children.

The organization, which calls itself B4U-Act, is lobbying for changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, the guideline of standards on mental health that's put together by the American Psychiatric Association.

The group says its mission is to help pedophiles before they create a crisis, and to do so by offering a less critical view of the disorder.

"Stigmatizing and stereotyping minor-attracted people inflames the fears of minor-attracted people, mental health professionals and the public, without contributing to an understanding of minor-attracted people or the issue of child sexual abuse," reads the organization's website.

B4U-Act said that 38 individuals attended a symposium in Baltimore last week, including researchers from Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and the universities of Illinois and Louisville. According to the group, which said to not endorse every point of view expressed, the speakers in attendance concluded that "minor-attracted" individuals are largely misunderstood and should not be criminalized even as their actions should be discouraged.

Speakers also argued that people who are sexually attracted to children should have input into the decision about how pedophilia is defined in the DSM, which they said is supposed to be a guide to promote “mental health vs. social control.”

Critics of the conference say it was a thinly veiled attempt to make children of any age sexually accessible to adults.

"Absolutely," Dr. Judith Reisman, a visiting professor of law at Liberty School of Law said. "Oh, they're very clear about that. Their goal is to take all shame out of the lust for children."

The American Psychiatric Association did not participate in the conference, and evidently does not condone the group's message.

"An adult who engages in sexual activity with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act and this is never considered normal or socially acceptable behavior," the APA wrote in a 2003 position statement.

Critics of the effort also note that the movement likens its fight for pedophilia acceptance to society's more recent embrace of homosexuality. They warn of a slippery slope to a time when pedophilia is "just another lifestyle choice" that won't warrant criminal charges—and will leave young children at risk.

Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council, said, "I think that we have to face the fact that most of these people with pedophile attractions are going to come up against the law. The laws against sex abuse and the laws against child pornography. And those laws should be strictly enforced."

Fox News’ Shannon Bream contributed to this report.

Don't Pooh-Pooh the Left's Push to Normalize Pedophilia

Originally posted on January 07, 2013 at The Rush Limbaugh Show

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We are loaded today, folks. You can't afford to miss a single syllable today. For example:

There is an effort underway to normalize pedophilia. Yep. And it has two aspects to it. One is that sex with children doesn't hurt them. Kids like it, and so do adults, and there's nothing wrong with it. It is something... I want to take you back. I want you to remember the first time, wherever you were, that you heard about gay marriage, and I want you to try to recall your reaction -- your first gut reaction -- when you heard that some activists or somebody was trying to promote the notion of gay marriage. What was your initial reaction?

"Aw, come on. It'll never happen. That's silly. What are you talking about?"

There is a movement on to normalize pedophilia, and I guarantee you your reaction to that is probably much the same as your reaction when you first heard about gay marriage. What has happened to gay marriage? It's become normal -- and in fact, with certain people in certain demographics it's the most important issue in terms of who they vote for. So don't pooh-pooh. There's a movement to normalize pedophilia. Don't pooh-pooh it. The people behind it are serious, and you know the left as well as I do. They glom onto something and they don't let go.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It's right there. It's in the UK Guardian. "Pedophilia: Bringing Dark Desires to Light -- The Jimmy Savile scandal..." He's a presenter on the BBC. "The Jimmy Savile scandal," it says here, "caused public revulsion, but experts disagree about what causes pedophilia -- and even how much harm it causes." So "experts disagree about what causes pedophilia," and then they do interviews to make the case for pedophilia.

(interruption)

No, it's not a crime; it's love!

(interruption)

Yeah, there are statutes on the book.

The statutes are wrong. The statutes are from a bygone era where everybody's morality was wrong. Look, I’m just telling you what it says. They make the case that kids enjoy it, adults enjoy it; what's wrong with a little love? The same things that were said about gay marriage. Look at the Elmo story, the puppeteer at PBS. Three or four young people, kids, were hit on by that puppeteer. Look how little attention that story got. In fact, that story was laughed off. It wasn't a big deal at all.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I'm not engaging in shock value. I'm not trying to shock you. I'm just telling you what's out there on this pedophilia business. I'll tell you where I first saw it. Wesley Smith, who is married to Debra Saunders. She's a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. He had a little blog post at the National Review website: "Is Pedophilia Just Another 'Sexual Orientation'?" I said, "What?" So I read it.

It was this piece that alerted me to the column, the piece about this in The Guardian, and that piece suggests that pedophilia may be just another sexual orientation. It's not perverted, it's not wrong, it's just another sexual orientation. And, in fact, it's quite loving and as natural as any other sexual orientation. This is what those of us with our heads and minds in the Dark Ages have got to modernize and realize.

The argument being made in the piece is that the desire for sex with children is a natural part of the human condition. And, in fact, if we acknowledge it, and encourage it, we can actually somehow better protect children. That's in the story, too. It's the same thinking, if you remember back in the nineties, when we were told that kids are going to have sex, you can't stop them. And that's why we needed to give away condoms in the schools.

Remember we had stories from Long Island about parents who said that they willingly let their daughters' boyfriends spend the night because it was better if their daughter was gonna have sex in a clean bedroom rather than the backseat of a car. Well, same thing here. We can better protect children if we know that they're having sex with adults rather than it being done on the sly.

If it's supervised, and if it's engaged in by loving people, then what's wrong with it? This is in the article. I just want to remind you, now, when you first heard about gay marriage -- and I don't mean to pick on gays. It's not what I'm saying. It's just something that was such a tremendous departure from accepted norms of the day. When you first heard about gay marriage, you pooh-poohed it.

When you first heard me say that the Sierra Club was gonna try to come after you and ban your SUV, what was your reaction? "Aw, come on, Rush! There you go again: Overreacting, exaggerating." Well, you know that the SUV has become a target. You know all about that. You know how much progress the notion of gay marriage has made. So I'm just keeping you here on the cutting edge.

In fact, the article in the Guardian actually quotes some academics. (For those of you in Rio Linda, that's college professor types. These are the people you see that have leather arm patches on their sport coats.) Academics are quoted in the Guardian piece saying that sex with adults does not hurt children. Normalization. So Jon Henley decided he'd write a whole piece on this, normalizing pedophilia, where he quotes extensively and looks into it and finds out what this is all about.

"Pedophilia: Bringing Dark Desires to Light," and it says, among other things (this article is loaded), "Pedophiles may be wired differently." There's nothing wrong with them. They're just "wired differently. ... But there is a growing conviction, notably in Canada, that pedophilia should probably be classified as a distinct sexual orientation, like heterosexuality or homosexuality. Two eminent researchers testified to that effect to a Canadian parliamentary commission last year, and the Harvard Mental Health Letter of July 2010 stated baldly that pedophilia 'is a sexual orientation' and therefore 'unlikely to change.'"

Can you imagine if Jerry Sandusky had had this information at his trial? What do you think the reaction would be to Jerry Sandusky's defense saying, "Hey, look, it's normal. The kids love it, he loved it, nobody was hurt. And in fact, it's just a different sexual orientation"? Now, what do you think's behind this? What kind of people do you think are behind this, this effort to normalize pedophilia? Which is what? The abuse of kids, is it not? Who's behind that?

What is their objective? They want us to all think that pedophilia is just another sexual orientation. You know who's gonna fall right in line is college kids, just like they have on gay marriage, just like they do on all other revolutionary social issues. Their own definition of the cutting edge, civil rights, freedom, understanding, tolerance. So I'm just warning you here. You think it can't happen. "Impossible! Don't be nutso and wacko on us, Rush."

I'm just asking you to remember all of the things that occur normally in our culture now that when you first heard about them you thought, "No way! That'll never happen; that'll never be mainstream," and now they are. Here is another one to add to the list. (interruption) You want more excerpts from this piece? "In 1976 the National Council for Civil Liberties, the respectable (and responsible) pressure group now known as Liberty, made a submission to parliament's criminal law revision committee.

"It caused barely a ripple. 'Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult,' it read, 'result in no identifiable damage ... The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of pedophilia result in lasting damage.'" So you see it's you who have to reorient your thinking. It's you who have to get rid of your bigotry. It's you that have to open up and become more tolerant. It is you judgmental people who think this is child abuse when it isn't.

You are the ones who are going to have to change. The pedophiles and the children involved, they're normal, just like you or anybody else. It is your old-fashioned conventions that create the problem. So another excerpt. "It is difficult today, after the public firestorm unleashed by revelations about Jimmy Savile [the presenter at BBC] and the host of child abuse allegations they have triggered, to imagine any mainstream group making anything like such a claim.

"But if it is shocking to realize how dramatically attitudes to pedophilia have changed in just three decades, it is even more surprising to discover how little agreement there is even now among those who are considered experts on the subject." Here is the money quote: "For Goode, though, broader, societal change is needed. 'Adult sexual attraction to children is part of the continuum of human sexuality; it's not something we can eliminate,' she says.

"'If we can talk about this rationally -- acknowledge that, yes, men do get sexually attracted to children, but no, they don't have to act on it -- we can maybe avoid the hysteria. We won't label pedophiles monsters; it won't be taboo to see and name what is happening in front of us.'" See? The only people who have to change are you who have these old-fashioned, Victorian-type attitudes. You're gonna have to open yourselves up to love and realize that wherever it happens, it's wonderful. No matter what.

Now, there were people -- I just want to remind you -- back during the early days of the effort to redefine what a family is, and in the early days of the gay marriage activists. There were people who said, "Well, if this becomes mainstream, then someday marrying your dog is gonna be okay, and then having two husbands and two wives in one family is gonna be okay, 'cause who can say it isn't?" There were others who predicted that pedophilia would be mainstream, and there was an outcry of opposition to this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, the expert that I was quoting extensively from in the pedophilia story in the UK Guardian is Sarah Goode. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Winchester and is the author of two, count them, two major sociological studies on pedophilia in society in 2009, 2011. Hey, folks, look, I know it's uncomfortable. I'm just warning you, there's now an effort on to normalize it. It's safe for children. Controlled supervised, engaged in two loving people, it's actually safer for children this way.

I mean, it's the same rationale back in the nineties for giving away condoms. We can't stop it. Kids are going to have sex, so we want to make it as safe as we can. It's the same technique being used here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now to the phones and Walter in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. I'm glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. I was really incensed earlier when you were talking about the business of pedophilia being entertained in England and possibly among the leftists in this society as giving it some kind of credibility. And every single civilization that I've ever studied about and every religion in this country teaches us over and over again about the destruction of civilization because of it. I mean, Greek history is one of the most egregious people who adapted as part of their culture the culture of the warrior and pedophilia. And it just absolutely amazed me that we live in this age where people have forgotten what happened with Sodom and Gomorrah, what Christ taught in his most profound thing, in anger, was about the hurting of little children. That he would put a millstone around them and cast them into the sea. And it's amazing that people have forgotten these warnings over 4,000 years and are willing to entertain this over and over again. I remember at BU, Boston University, where I studied, a [professor] told us that in the mid-sixties, that psychological association of the United States went from one person held off these aberrations and said that they were, you know, they were mental problems that needed to be directly dealt with from, you know, a clinical point of view, and when that person died, the American Psychological Association then began the slippery slope of allowing all these aberrations to --

RUSH: Let me ask you a question.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: You say you've been studying this.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: Before I mentioned this today, were you aware of the UK Guardian story? Were you aware of the effort that is quite a ways along now to normalize pedophilia?

CALLER: I didn't know that. I thought that they had --

RUSH: This is the point. You didn't know it, I didn't know it 'til I ran across the story, you didn't know it, and most other people don't know it, either, and this is why it succeeds. Most people don't have time for stuff like this. Most people aren't reading the UK Guardian; they're trying to get jobs. Or, as in the case of some, I got a New York Post story here: "Welfare Recipients Take Out Cash At Strip Clubs, Liquor Stores And X-Rated Shops." Welfare recipients are using the debit cards at these kinds of places, whatever, they're not paying any attention to pedophilia. So this stuff happens literally under the radar.

Now, if you're just joining us, the UK Guardian has a story today that essentially quotes a bunch of college academics who've studied it and said there's really nothing wrong with pedophilia. It's just another sexual orientation. In fact, it may be safer for children when it's engaged in knowingly and accepted. Children love it, the adults love it, and if there's love involved, what can be wrong? I'm not making this up. We'll link to the story at RushLimbaugh.com. You can read it yourself. I was made aware of it by a contributor at National Review, Wesley J. Smith.

Like I mentioned, try to imagine where you were the very first time you heard somebody seriously make the case for gay marriage and ask yourself what was your reaction. It was probably something like, "Right, that will never happen," and now here we are. Gay marriage and gay rights happen to be at the top of important issues for young voters ages 18 to 29. It is the number one most important issue to them, civil rights, freedom, tolerance, liberty, all that cool stuff when you're that young. Well, here we go with the same technique. It's safer. It's safer for children under these circumstances than if it's happening under the cover of darkness and behind the law. If it's happening under the shroud of illegality, then it has a stigma; but it really shouldn't, it's just another sexual orientation. It's a serious piece, a serious effort. And it's all about these people wishing to have their preferences and desires judged to be normal, not weird or perverted or what have you.

And even if you had heard about it, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do about it? You might organize opposition to it. You might organize in California, a proposition, you put it on the ballot to oppose it and you win, and a federal judge will overturn it. Yeah, pedophilia, it's already against the law. What do you do to stop it? Who's gonna stop it? Do you think today's Democrat Party's gonna speak out against it? No. You won't have 'em advocating it, not yet, but that day's coming, if it follows the same progression as some of these other things you thought would never, ever happen and they are happening now in a mainstream way.

So that is what Walter here is reacting to, and he said that pedophilia, societies can't survive when stuff like this becomes normal. But you've got some official psychiatric groups that are endorsing it as normal. And the only thing wrong with pedophilia is the bigoted attitude towards it, is the point of the story in the UK Guardian, which is left wing, but it's not a fringe publication, it's a mainstream publication in Great Britain.

END TRANSCRIPT

Cross-Posted at AskMarion

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MEDIA & POLITICIANS STIR UP FRENZY BUT WON’T REPORT EDUCATIONAL “CHILD FIND” LAW THAT COULD HAVE PREVENTED NEWTOWN , CT MASSACRE

By: LM & AJ  -  cross-posted at Ask Marion - h/t to the NoisyRoom for photo

In light of the recent massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, we learn today that, “The Newtown school gunman’s mother was so angry at education chiefs for failing her son she thought ‘screw them’ and refused to stop dealing with them any more, a relative has claimed.  Nancy Lanza pleaded for better services for her disturbed son Adam but was apparently rebuffed so many times, she took it upon herself to home school him.”

One can imagine there isn’t a Special Education Director who isn’t wondering if they could do more to identify students with mental health disorders.  In fact, there are some who know they can do more – *and the law requires them to do it.  However, the administrative apparatus of the public school system is managed in a way that restricts access to the supports and services needed by children with mental illness or disabilities.

Too often, pressure from school Superintendents require Special Education Directors to reduce their budgets, thus leaving Directors no choice but to purposely deny eligibility, interventions, appropriate services and/or supports to children who need them.  In essence, school districts claim these children are fine or they’re “cured” because they really don’t need interventions or services despite clear warning signs that something’s very wrong.

Adam Lanza was no exception.  Educational professionals report they saw Adam Lanza’s problems as early as 9^th grade.  At Newtown High School , he was often having episodes and the protocol used by the school was to call his mother, Nancy Lanza, and have her come in to diffuse each crisis.

The head of security for the school district at the time, Richard Novia, told AP reporter Adam Geller, “He would have an episode, and she’d have to return or come to the high school and deal with it”.

While Nancy Lanza suffered in silence and rarely spoke of the seriousness of Adam’s problems, the indicators of her son’s severe mental illness were there.  Nancy Lanza’s friends knew Adam had switched schools more than once and that Nancy tried home schooling him.

John Tambascio said, “I always said that I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes.  But I thought, “Wow.  She holds it well.””  Russell Hanoman said Adam was “clearly a troubled child.”  Ryan Kraft, who babysat Adam when he was younger, said, “His mom Nancy had always instructed me to keep an eye on him at all times, never turn my back or even go to the bathroom or anything like that.  Which I found odd but I really didn’t ask; it wasn’t any of my business.”

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) includes a legal mandate requiring school districts, under the “Child Find” provision, to seek out and find children who exhibit significant problems at school, to include developmental and functional problems; not just academic problems.  Most parents aren’t aware of this and the media and politicians won’t tell you about it, but all school districts know.

Under IDEA, anyone concerned about an individual can refer the student, confidentially, to the school district for assessment.

Usually, it is a teacher who refers a student for assessment. Unfortunately, due to the nationwide “budget constraint” mantra from the educational system, we are told that teachers are discouraged by their districts in the referral of students with suspected disorders and that "it’s a big waste of time as districts take no forward motion" according to one teacher who has asked to remain anonymous.

Did Lanza’s school district follow the Child Find law?  Did they refer him for a psycho-educational assessment and provide the interventions and services needed?  As we now know, they did not.

You may wonder, “Why at school?”  Children with mental illness or disabilities experience the majority of their difficulties within and because of school.  The random, unpredictable and social dynamics and demands of all school campuses generally intensify the manifestations of a child’s disorder.

Their inability to properly navigate the school environment is the first warning sign that, without proper interventions and supports, they will be unable to navigate in the real world when they reach adulthood.

Unfortunately for parents, their distraught and possibly violent child is often denied an assessment by the school district or, if given an assessment, they’re denied Special Education eligibility and/or appropriate supports and services, especially if the child is demonstrating “adequate academic progress”.  Parents are often pleading and begging for help from the school.

This is where school districts misinterpret the law.  Clearly, IDEA legislation requires that students who demonstrate issues of functional, social, and/or emotional development are to be assessed and the needed interventions, supports and services must be provided.

If Adam Lanza’s school district had followed the law, they would have requested Nancy Lanza’s consent to conduct a psycho-educational assessment in all areas of suspected disability, which includes mental health, in order to get to the bottom of his mental illness, thus enabling them to determine the interventions and services he needed (to include institutionalization if necessary).  In addition, he would have been closely monitored via an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

Adam Lanza’s problems were no secret; his brother told reporters that Adam suffered from a “personality disorder” (the clinical term is usually “sociopath” or “psychopath”).  Adam Lanza’s mental illness was evident and Nancy Lanza’s problems with the school district have been reported.

Ask yourself… could things have been different if the school district had followed the law just a few short years ago?  Would it have revealed the severity of his mental illness? Would interventions have been provided that may have prevented the murder of 27 innocents?  We’ll never know the real answer to that question now.

But we do know his mother, Nancy Lanza, suffered in silence, was murdered by her son, and friends and educators knew something was seriously wrong with Adam Lanza.

Often, when a parent is struggling at home with a child who has a mental illness or disability, they are completely overwhelmed and very few can understand this unless they walk in the parent’s shoes.  More often than not, parents are not aware of the laws and provisions of IDEA and rarely do they have the energy or resources to fight the educational apparatus’ complex, bureaucratic and lengthy legal process.  Not all school districts create barriers such as what is described in this article, but the problem is that the vast majority do.

Like Nancy Lanza, many parents end up pulling their children out of school and implementing a home school program.   Consequently, removed from the social world, the child’s problems may appear to diminish somewhat… but those problems re-emerge when they are adults and attempt to re-enter mainstream society.

Did you know that twelve children commit suicide every day in the US ?  Everyday.  One must ask what educators knew and what they did or didn’t do while those children were in their care.

Adam Lanza became an evil killer and educators saw signs of trouble as early as the 9^th grade.  One must ask what educators knew and what they did or didn’t do while he was in their care.

For parents of children with autism, it’s important to correct the media’s unsubstantiated reference to Asperger’s Syndrome with regard to Adam Lanza.  Although Adam Lanza’s brother said “somewhat autistic”, if reporters had done their due diligence, they would have learned that an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is not a mental illness and it was not in any way related to what Adam Lanza did.

Autism Society: No Link Between Autism and Planned Violence

• No evidence exists to link autism and premeditated violence. Suggesting otherwise is wrong and harmful to the more than 1.5 million individuals living with autism in the United States.¹
• Individuals with autism and those with other disabilities are more likely to be victims of violence than the perpetrators.²
• Many of the individuals with Asperger’s syndrome who have committed crimes had co-existing psychiatric disorders.³
  1. Gunasekaran, S., & Chaplin, E. (2012). Autism spectrum disorders and offending. Advances in Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities, 6, 308-313.
  2. Hughes, K., Bellis, M. A., Jones, L., Wood, S., Bates, G., Eckley, L., ... & Officer, A. (2012). Prevalence and risk of violence against adults with disabilities: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. The Lancet. 379, 1621-1629.
  3. Newman SS, Ghaziuddin M: Violent crime in Asperger syndrome: the role of psychiatric comorbidity. J Autism Dev Disord 39:1949-52, 2008.

The media has yet to discuss the real issue regarding Adam Lanza, the failure of the educational system, and what might have prevented the massacre of 27 innocent people in Newtown , CT.

Did his school district follow the law and provide the appropriate interventions, supports and services that he needed while he was young, which could have prevented him from becoming an evil killer that took so many innocent lives on December 14^th?

President Obama said that he will put funding toward a solution.  Well, here it is Mr. President.  Clear evidence of what can be, and should have been, done.  These laws are already mandated; they’re on the books.  The job of the Executive Branch is to enforce the laws of the land that are enacted by Congress, so that’s what the American people have hired you to do.  Enforce the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

----------------

*Excerpts of IDEA Legislation:

Child Find System - Sec. 303.321 - IDEA requires all states to have a "comprehensive Child Find system" to assure that all children who are in need of early intervention or special education services are located, identified, and referred.

Sec. 300.320 Definition of individualized education program.

(a) General. As used in this part, the term individualized education program or IEP means a written statement for each child with a disability that is developed, reviewed, and revised in a meeting in accordance with Sec. Sec. 300.320 through 300.324, and that must include--

(1) A statement of the child's present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, including--

(i) How the child's disability affects the child's involvement and progress in the general education curriculum (i.e., the same curriculum as for nondisabled children); or

(ii) For preschool children, as appropriate, how the disability affects the child's participation in appropriate activities;

Case law has further clarified the specific parameters of functional, social, and emotional progress.  An example of this is Acalanes vs. Student in California .

About the authors:  We are parents of children with disabilities and have collectively advocated for the needs of children with disabilities for twenty years.  LM is currently a paralegal involved in litigation against the CA Department of Education.  This litigation, which was filed one year ago, alleges the State’s failure to appropriately monitor how individual school districts provide supports and services to children with special needs.  AJ is currently working as a special needs consultant and has served on various autism-related, non-profit boards.  AJ has been very involved in legislative change regarding how children with disabilities are provided services and spearheaded the creation of pilot classrooms for school districts to help them meet the educational needs of children with autism.

Technorati Tags: Asperger's,Autism,Child Find System,Connecticut,creating chaos,educate yourself,gun control,IDEA,intellectual disabilities,media,mental health,Obamaland,politicians,public schools,scapegoats,shootings,Special Education,violence,watch the other hand,You be the judge

SOROS REMAKES AMERICA INTO NARCO NATION

By Cliff Kincaid -  December 7, 2012  - Renew America – cross-posted at AskMarion and h/t to NewsWithViews.com and Liana Smith

As more states embrace legalization of marijuana—a pet cause of George Soros for decades—the British publication The Independent has published a groundbreaking series of articles by journalist Patrick Cockburn on how his son went insane smoking the drug.

Cockburn and his son Henry, who was treated for psychosis and partially recovered, have written an article in which Patrick Cockburn is quoted as saying his son played Russian roulette with cannabis “and lost.”

Henry, who smoked marijuana daily for seven years and was in mental hospitals for about eight years as a result, says, “When I reached a mental hospital, called St Martin’s, I spent three hours walking around the lunch tables trying to listen to my shoes. I thought my shoes were talking to me.”

Patrick Cockburn spent months speaking to the experts in the field and reports on the substantial evidence linking sustained marijuana use with mental illness. One expert, Sir William Paton, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, reveals “that even limited social use of cannabis could precipitate schizophrenia in people who previously had no psychological problems,” and noted that “smoking a single joint could induce schizophrenia-like symptoms such as hallucinations, paranoia and fragmented thought processes.”

“Three-quarters of consumers may take cannabis with no ill effect but the remaining quarter, the genetically vulnerable, play Russian roulette,” Cockburn says.

The added significance of the series of articles by Patrick Cockburn is that he is a left-wing media figure—the son of Marxist author Claud Cockburn—and might be predisposed to believe that marijuana is, as the liberal media constantly tell us, a relatively harmless drug or a substance with “medical” qualities. But he knows the harm it causes firsthand through what it did to his son.

AIM noted back in 2004, in a special report on George Soros, the main financier behind the drug legalization movement, that although marijuana is depicted by the media as a “soft” drug, it has “extremely negative consequences.” The book, Marijuana and Madness, cites studies and evidence from around the world, some of it going back 40 years, linking the use of marijuana to mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and psychosis.

In a previous article for the left-wing publication Counterpunch, Patrick Cockburn took issue with a report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy which played down the dangers associated with marijuana. “They fail to make clear that for people genetically susceptible to psychosis the risks involved in taking cannabis may be lethally high,” he noted. “Cigarettes and alcohol, whatever harm they cause, do not, at a young age, send you mad.”

The Global Commission on Drug Policy is funded by the Open Society Institute of George Soros.

In this country, the case of Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell stands out as a case study of the harmful effects of the drug. Bedell, who shot and wounded two guards at the Pentagon in March of 2010, was a psychotic pothead who hated a government that he believed was standing in the way of his desire to use, grow and glorify marijuana. He virtually worshipped the drug. “I’m a cannabis enthusiast,” he proclaimed.

John Podesta, head of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), had suggested on ABC News that the taxing and legalization of marijuana on a national basis could be a way to pay for Obama’s health care plan.

“The pro-cannabis lobby says that the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has failed and legalization or regulation should be tried, though critics argue that no government would ever license a drug that sends at least two percent of its consumers insane,” Cockburn reports.

In the first of Cockburn’s articles, “Is this the ‘tobacco moment’ for cannabis?,” the veteran foreign correspondent suggests a connection between marijuana use and psychotic episodes that is comparable to the scientific recognition that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer and other illnesses.

In addition to the dangers of mental illness, Cockburn notes that a major study finds a drop in intelligence associated with heavy marijuana use.

Cockburn’s articles on the link between marijuana and mental illness become increasingly relevant as the public in the U.S. comes to grips with the fact that voters in the states of Washington and Colorado on November 6 passed ballot measures legalizing marijuana, in violation of federal law. Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette has introduced federal legalization that would amend the Controlled Substances Act to assert that federal law does not preempt state laws.

In response, a group called Save Our Society From Drugs, has said, “Many concerned citizens, community groups, law enforcement agencies and elected officials are concerned how these laws will impact their communities, states and the nation, and are urging the Obama Administration to take action by clearly communicating and enforcing federal drug policies.”

The group added, “Keeping marijuana illegal is a treaty obligation under the 1961 International Convention on Narcotic Drugs and is supported by the two other Conventions: the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Drugs and the 1988 Anti-Trafficking Convention. Allowing state marijuana laws to supersede federal drug laws violates our treaty obligations.”

It said, “Marijuana legalization will significantly impact our environment, school scores and drop-out rates, accident and vehicle fatality rates, employee productivity, and healthcare and treatment costs.”

But the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance is rallying behind the DeGette bill, saying it would “end federal marijuana prohibition and allow states to set their own marijuana policy without federal interference.”

Cliff Kincaid

Technorati Tags: destroying America,drug use,drungs,George Soros,John Podesta,leglaization of marijuana,stand-up America,wake-up America,watch the other hand,mental health,Cliff Kincaid,manipulation of the public

Studies Confirm Women Face Depression After Abortion, Other Problems

by Steven Ertelt -LifeNews.com Editor - September 28, 2010

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – A new study with a very limited sample of women having abortions, just 69, has received considerable attention for supposedly disproving the plethora of peer-reviewed studies confirming women who have abortions face both depression and other mental health problems.

Other recent studies from the last two years provide nearly irrefutable evidence that abortion affects women in a myriad of ways — making it so they face everything from depression and relationship problems to PTSD and elevated risks for abusing drugs or alcohol.

An August study published in the Journal of Pregnancy and involving 374 women who had abortions — more than five times the number of women who appeared in the new study — found women having high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms for women having both early and late abortions.

Approximately 52 percent of the early abortion group and 67 percent of the late term abortion group met the American Psychological Association’s criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSD).

The authors of the study say those high rates are the result of women facing pressure or coercion to have an abortion or, at minimum, ambivalence about having it — showing more pre-abortion screening is needed to rule out abortion as an option for many women.

A May 2010 study put out by researchers at the University of Manitoba in Canada found women who have had abortions are about four times more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol as those who carried their pregnancy to term. The authors confirmed a link between abortion and the substance abuse issues.

The study appeared in the April issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry and it showed women having abortions were 3.8 times more likely to have substance abuse disorders.

That was the case even when other factors such as exposure to violence were included that could have raised the risk outside of abortion.

The Canadian study also found abortion associated with other mental health conditions such as mood disorders, but substance abuse proved to be the strongest link when it comes to post-abortion problems for women.

Meanwhile, three studies alone published in peer-reviewed medical journals at the end of 2008 show abortion causes problems for women.

Dr. Priscilla Coleman, a professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University, and her colleagues published a study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research showing an abortion-depression link exists.

The research team found induced abortions result in increased risks for a myriad of mental health problems ranging from anxiety to depression to substance abuse disorders.

The number of cases of mental health issues rose by as much as 17 percent in women having abortions compared to those who didn’t have one and the risks of each particular mental health problem rose as much as 145% for post-abortive women.

For 12 out of 15 of the mental health outcomes examined, a decision to have an abortion resulted in an elevated risk for women.

"What is most notable in this study is that abortion contributed significant independent effects to numerous mental health problems above and beyond a variety of other traumatizing and stressful life experiences," they concluded.

Researchers at Otago University in New Zealand reported their findings in the British Journal of Psychiatry and found that women who have abortions have an increased risk of developing mental health problems.

The study found that women who had abortions had rates of mental health problems about 30% higher than other women. The conditions most associated with abortion included anxiety disorders and substance abuse disorders.

Abortions increased the risk of severe depression and anxiety by one-third and as many as 5.5 percent of all mental health disorders seen in New Zealand result from women having abortions.

A third study, from a team at the University of Queensland and published in the December issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, found women who have an abortion are three times more likely to experience a drug or alcohol problems during their lifetime.

The study showed that women who had experienced an abortion were at increased risk of illicit drug and alcohol use compared with women who had never been pregnant or who gave birth.

In 2009, a review of studies examining various types of prenatal loss and the effects on subsequent parenting has concluded that abortion may be "particularly damaging to the parenting process."

Technorati Tags: abortion,abortions,Planned Parenthood,PTSD,effects of abortions,women's health,depression,religion,guilt,Margaret Sanger,eugenics,anxiety disorders,parenting

Court orders Planned Parenthood to start telling the truth

Abortionists ordered to warn of serious suicide risk

WND: A federal appeals court affirmed the last provision of a long-disputed informed consent law today, ruling that the state of South Dakota can require abortionists to inform women seeking to terminate the lives of their unborn baby that they face an increased risk of suicide.

Attorney Harold J. Cassidy called the decision of the full 8th Circuit Court of Appeals “a fabulous victory for the women of the state of South Dakota.”

Cassidy represents Leslee Unruh, president of the Alpha Center of Sioux Falls, and Stacy Wollman, president of Care Net of Rapid City. They were allowed in intervene in the case filed by Planned Parenthood against the state’s new law.

“This victory represents the fourth separate decision of the 8th Circuit reversing the district court in this one case, two decisions issued by en banc (full) courts four years apart – a rare occurrence that underscores the importance of the issues presented by the case,” said Cassidy.

“As a result of this case upholding all eight major provisions of South Dakota’s Abortion Informed Consent Statute, pregnant mothers will now be informed: 1) that ‘an abortion terminates the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being;’ 2) that the mother’s ‘relationship with that second human being enjoys protection under the Constitution of the United States and the laws of South Dakota;’ 3) ‘that relationship and all rights attached to it will be terminated;’ and 4) the abortion places the mother ‘at increased risk for suicide ideation and suicide,’” he said.

The court’s opinion said even Planned Parenthood’s own testimony documented a link between abortion and suicide.

“Planned Parenthood’s own expert, Dr. Nada Stotland, admitted that one of the studies, which determined a suicide rate after abortion of 31.9 per 100,000 as compared to a suicide rate after live birth of 5.0 per 100,000, ‘indicates an association; not causation, but an association’ between abortion and suicide,” the judges wrote.

Commenting on the decision, Steven H. Aden of the Alliance Defending Freedom said “a woman’s right to make a fully informed choice is more important than Planned Parenthood’s bottom line.”

“If Planned Parenthood truly cared about the well-being of women, it would not try to prevent them from being informed of the well-documented risk of suicide that accompanies abortion,” he said. “The 8th Circuit has done the right thing in upholding a reasonable law that protects the well-being of women by making sure that the truth is not hidden from them.”

The Sioux Falls Alpha Center’s Unruh said the ruling “gives hope to the hopeless.”

“These are women who had abortions who were coerced, persecuted, broken. These women did a very courageous thing in going to the South Dakota legislature and telling their stories,” she said. “These judges have believed them, listened to their hearts and have ruled on their behalf.”

The lawsuit was brought by Planned Parenthood against the state after the legislature in 2005 adopted the new informed consent requirements for abortionists.

Cassidy noted that normally a statement of the importance of the decision would suffice.

“However, we feel that, in this instance, given the fact that South Dakota’s Informed Consent Statute, passed to protect the interests of pregnant mothers in South Dakota, was the subject of false claims and protracted litigation that took seven years to conclude, and required the intervenors to win four different appeals in the Eighth Circuit, requires further comment,” he said.

“Throughout the legislative processes, over the past eight years, and all during the pending of this litigation, as well as that of the new case now pending in the District Court (in which Alpha Center and Care Net are party intervenors), Planned Parenthood has threatened expensive litigation and counsel fees. Planned Parenthood has argued that they should be free to perform their radical abortion practices the way its New York City office prefers and that the people of the state of South Dakota should not impose regulations that reflect the values of the people of the state; and the people should not protect the interests of their pregnant mothers.

“Planned Parenthood has been proven completely wrong on every issue in the case. The state statute is a constitutionally valid method to protect pregnant mothers,” he said.

“The people of the State of South Dakota have stood up to the threats, false accusations and litigation tactics of Planned Parenthood. In the process, the people of South Dakota have shown that they will not be intimidated by threats of litigation, threats of payment of attorneys’ fees, and will hold fast to their conviction that a handful of people in New York, with a radical philosophy, will not dictate to the people of South Dakota, when, if, and how they will protect their women from harm, pressure, coercion and false and incomplete information when making the most important decision of their lives,” he said.

Another new law adopted in South Dakota is subject to a second challenge by Planned Parenthood. The law requires that a physician have a personal interview with a woman seeking an abortion. The woman must be offered counseling by state-approved counseling centers before the abortionist can schedule the procedure.

In South Dakota, Planned Parenthood flies abortionists in to a facility where they perform abortions. The law requires doubling the visits, because an abortionist could not interview a woman and perform an abortion on her during the same trip.

The law also requires that an abortionist determine whether the woman is being coerced into the abortion and imposes a waiting period.

Several of the requirements no longer are being challenged by Planned Parenthood, and they are going into effect in the state. Remaining under challenge is the counseling requirement along with the three-day waiting period.

The state recently announced: “Pursuant to the 2011 and 2012 legislation and the order, beginning July 1, 2012, doctors who perform abortions must assess each woman for pre-existing risk factors such as coercion and must advise the woman about the risk of adverse psychological outcomes.”

During the 2012 legislative session, South Dakotans amended several portions of the 2011 abortion law, and Planned Parenthood followed up with an amended complaint. Planned Parenthood dropped its challenge to the provisions regarding coercion and a risk-factor assessment but continued challenging requirements regarding the referrals to the pregnancy help centers and the three-day delay.

As a result, the two sides agreed to an order that the coercion and risk-factor assessment provisions could go into effect right away.

“The remaining challenged provisions – the requirement for involvement of the pregnancy help centers and the three-day delay – will continue to be enjoined pending the outcome of discovery, briefing and argument before the district court,” the state’s announcement said.

According to a statement by the Alpha Center of Sioux Falls and the Black Hills Pregnancy Center of Rapid City, two abortion alternative centers to which women may be referred, the decision from Judge Karen Schreier opens the door to substantial new requirements for abortions.

“Planned Parenthood can no longer have a clerk schedule abortion surgery – which has been its practice – without a physician first seeing a pregnant mother, compelling a change in the practices at the Planned Parenthood abortion facility,” the statement said.

“Only a physician can schedule an abortion, and only after the physician first performs an assessment, which includes an assessment to determine if the pregnant mother is being pressured or coerced into having an abortion. Until now, no such assessments were performed, and no physician saw the pregnant mother until after the surgery was scheduled and only after she was required to sign a consent for the abortion and only after she was required to pay for the abortion,” the statement continued.

In today’s decision over the 2005 law, the appeals court ruling said: “To succeed … Planned Parenthood must show that the [suicide-abortion link] disclosure at issue ‘is either untruthful, misleading or not relevant to the patient’s decision to have an abortion.’”

“The legislature expressly required the disclosure of an ‘increased risk,’ not a causal link. Based on the accepted usage of the term ‘increased risk’ … the usage of that term … does not imply a disclosure of a causal relationship,” the court said.

Instead, the section “requires a disclosure simply that the risk of suicide and suicide ideation is higher among women who abort.”

The judges also said, “We hold that the disclosure facially mandated by the suicide advisory is truthful.”

“The state legislature, rather than a federal court, is in the best position to weigh the divergent results and come to a conclusion about the best way to protect its populace. So long as the means chosen by the state does not impose an unconstitutional burden on women seeking abortions or their physicians, we have no basis to interfere,” the court said.

Understand Planned Parenthood’s agenda. Get “The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom”

Technorati Tags: abortion,women's health,women's clinics,depression,abortion clinics,abortion procedure,Planned parenthood,South Dakota,Alliance Defending Freedom

Australian children-sterilized without parental consent under new eugenics law

(NaturalNews) If you have ever seen the famous 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, you likely recall several disturbing scenes in which mental health patients are given frontal-lobe lobotomies, or the iconic scene where actor Jack Nicholson's character undergoes electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Today, these horrific forms of so-called mental health treatment are considered to be cruel relics of the past, but a new bill in Australia proposes that young children be given these treatments without parental consent, and even be permitted to undergo sterilization procedures without parental consent.

The Government of Western Australia's Mental Health Commission (WAMHC) has basically conjured up a proposal for new mental health legislation that bypasses parental involvement in the mental health treatment process, and instead tasks children under age 18, and of any age, with making the decision about whether or not to be sterilized, or whether or not to have their brain tissue destroyed with psychosurgery procedures. If a "mental health professional" can convince children that they need such treatments for their own good, in other words, than Australia's youngest members of society will be open game for the eugenicist agenda.

It almost sounds like the plot of a sick movie, but it is all true and fully documented right in the WAMHC Mental Health Bill 2011, which you can access here: http://www.mentalhealth.wa.gov.au

Eugenicists want to sterilize Australian children without ever telling the kids' parents

In the twisted minds of those who have seized positions of power all over the world, separating children from their parents and performing medical experiments on them in secret is a fully acceptable form of "medicine." And this form of child abuse is exactly what WAMHC has proposed in its new mental health bill.
Pages 135 and 136 of the bill (pages 157 and 158 of the PDF) cover the issue of sterilization, explaining that if a psychiatrist decides that a child under 18 years of age "has sufficient maturity," he or she will be able to consent to sterilization without parental consent. It also goes on to say that parents will never be notified that the sterilization procedure occurred, as only the "Chief Psychiatrist" will be privy to this information.

It sounds an awful lot like the euthanasia programs that emerged in Germany during the 1930s, when Nazis began secretly sterilizing individuals with physical or mental disabilities as part of "Operation T4" (http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/people/victims.htm). This eugenics program was later intensified, of course, when German physicians at Nazi death camps routinely sterilized men, women, and children, and later killed them, as part of the Nazi regime's utterly revolting ethnic cleansing experiments (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/aumed.html).

Medical 'authorities' want to arbitrarily commit children to mental institutions, indefinitely restrain them, and force them to undergo brain-damaging procedures

All of this gets worse, however, with other language scattered throughout the bill that would allow psychiatrists to involuntarily and indefinitely detain children who are "suspected" of having a mental illness. And during their detainment, such children can be forced to comply with drug, restraint, and seclusion protocols, as well as be forced to undergo permanently-damaging procedures like psychosurgery or ECT.

Worse, those who would be permitted to detain these children in the first place, deemed as "authorized mental health practitioners," are so loosely defined that virtually anyone could be authorized by the Chief Psychiatrist to abduct supposedly "mentally ill" children and commit them to mental institutions against their will and their parents' will.

Mental Health Commission is only accepting comments on the bill until March 9, 2012

The language in Australia's Mental Health Bill 2011 truly is horrifying, but not necessarily surprising. Similar efforts to undermine parental authority are taking place both in the U.S. and around the world.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, for instance, recently signed into law Senate Assembly Bill 499, which allows for children as young as age 12 to be vaccinated with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil, Hepatitis B, and various other sexually-transmitted disease (STD) vaccines without parental consent (http://www.naturalnews.com/033848_Merck_legislators.html).

But our friends "down under" need your help today in spreading the word about this deadly legislation, and sending comments of opposition to Australia's Mental Health Commission as soon as possible.

You can send your comments by email to:

contactus@mentalhealth.wa.gov.au
You can send your comments by "snail" mail to:
GPO Box X2299
Perth Business Centre, W.A. 6847
Australia

If you live in Australia, you can also contact the Mental Health Minister, the Health Minister, and your local Member of Parliament by visiting:
http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/parliament/memblist.nsf/WAllMembers

The deadline to submit a comment is March 9, so be sure to submit your comment before then. And remember, health freedom issues, whether domestic or abroad, eventually affect all of us if left unchecked. This is why it is important to combat tyranny and injustice anywhere and everywhere it may be found.
Sources for this article include:
http://www.mentalhealth.wa.gov.au

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035185_Australia_sterilization_children.html#ixzz1oYeAUpot

Source: Natural News - Thursday, March 08, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer – h/t to MJ

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035185_Australia_sterilization_children.html#ixzz1oYg47Lko

Don’t kid yourself people… If Obama is re-elected and/or ObamaCare stands, America is next!! Election 2012 is your last chance to stand-up.  Make Obama a one-term president and demand that ObamaCare is repealed and replaced.

United Nations Preparing to Manage Global Mental Health

Brandon Turbeville  -  Activist Post

In a world where national sovereignty is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, announcements that the United Nations will be taking the lead on any variety of topics is no longer shocking. Indeed, there is a real push across the world to view the United Nations as the ultimate authority on virtually every issue, from human rights to nutritional content in food.

Through decades of propagandizing, the United Nations has developed an undeserved reputation for humanitarianism and democracy. As a result, the vast majority see the United Nations as a benevolent organization which they can call on to defend human rights in their home countries. Unfortunately, national sovereignty rarely enters into the equation anymore, as the average citizen tends to look straight to the United Nations to address their concerns, bypassing their own governments.

As case in point, a recent report by AFP, entitled, “Experts urge U.N. to address mental health,” discusses how a recent article in PLoS Medicine, a reputable medical journal, has called for the United Nations General Assembly to develop a plan to tackle mental, neurological, and substance-abuse disorders (MNS).

The article was authored by Vikram Patel of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Judith Bass from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in the United States, among other contributors. They write, “The time has come for recognition at the highest levels of global development, namely the U.N. General Assembly, of the urgent need for a global strategy to address the global burden of MNS disorders.”

They also state that investment is needed in three different, but key, areas – “expanding knowledge about mental health disorders, better access to evidence-based programs of care and treatment, and protection of human rights.”

Although the further understanding of mental health disorders and their treatment is a laudable goal, it is also one in which both the Psychiatric/Psychological complex and the United Nations have a horrible track record.

Indeed, even within individual national boundaries, the Psychiatric/Psychological complex has vastly more authority that it needs or deserves. When one multiplies that oppressive authority with the global jurisdiction of the United Nations, as well as the U.N’s tendency to introduce tyrannical guidelines in its own right, we can see a clear recipe for disaster.

In an excellent breakdown of the situation, the Daily Bell writes,

The ultimate element of this charade (and probably the reason for it) will be a People’s Charter for Mental Health that will provide the opportunity for the elites to create yet more command-and-control bureaucracies.

To begin with these bureaucracies may seem innocent and even innovative. But over time it will become apparent that the UN is setting up some sort of worldwide mental health apparatus to evaluate people’s emotional and intellectual stability.

Worst case – if it gets that far – the UN will try to provide itself not only with the authority to evaluate people’s mental competence but also the authority to send people to mental institutions and re-education camps if they are not sufficiently docile and open to the appropriate level of mind control.

Although this analysis may appear extreme to some, the fact is that it is not nearly as extreme as it may sound at first. Considering the level of control that the Psychiatric/Psychological complex currently wields over our lives, the transition of this undeserved authority from a national level to that of an international body is not at all far-fetched.

Indeed, an authoritarian standard-setting UN-based organization in the areas of mental health would no doubt be an issue for all to be concerned with. The UN has, on virtually every occasion, shown its aptitude toward oppressive legislation, lack of concern for human dignity and individual rights, as well as forcing its guidelines upon the rest of the world by stealth and economic sanctions.

For instance, the standard-setting organization for food, Codex Alimentarius, has consistently forced its guidelines on national governments by virtue of the WTO trade dispute settlement mechanisms. Codex Alimentarius guidelines involve reducing the level of nutrition available in vitamin and mineral supplements, allowing for the increased proliferation of genetically modified food, and unlimited irradiation of food products. (See my book Codex Alimentarius – The End of Health Freedom)

U.N.-related organizations like the IMF (International Monetary Fund) are also highly successful at implementing austerity programs on debt-ridden countries like Greece as a pre-condition for more loans, which are themselves nothing more than an increase of irrational debt by virtue of the sacrifice of living standards and tangible physical wealth.

Even the WTO (World Trade Organization), another U.N.-related agency is famous for dismantling any protectionist tariffs or subsidies imposed by nation states upon cheap products being dumped into their economies. It is also well-known for punishing any nation that even slightly steps away from the agenda of globalism.

A U.N.-controlled bureaucracy overseeing the treatment and diagnosis of mental health disorders, addiction, or anything else that would so greatly involve the individual, is without a doubt a recipe for disaster.

The Psychiatric/Psychological complex already wields entirely too much authority over the lives of supposedly free human beings. This authority, as it currently exists, must be taken away.

We cannot afford to give this industry any more control over our lives, much less give international authority to the detriment of national sovereignty.

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University where he earned the Pee Dee Electric Scholar’s Award as an undergraduate. He has had numerous articles published dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, and civil liberties. He also the author of Codex Alimentarius - The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies and Five Sense Solutions. Brandon Turbeville is available for podcast, radio, and TV interviews. Please contact us at activistpost@gmail.com.