Is ten million American children on powerful antidepressant drugs enough? Apparently not, because the US government wants to expand it's program. The Presidents 'New Freedom' Commission on Mental Health came out with their recommendations for the US Mental Health system in 2001, and since then the number of children on Seretonin re-uptake inhibitors and a range of other psychiatric drugs has increased dramatically.

Pharmaceutical companies are making big profits marketing these new 'medicines' at children, and US citizens are no doubt supposed to be reassured that their benevolent government is looking after the future mental health of the nation. New labels of 'illness' are being applied to children, and a whole range of psychiatric drugs are now being administered. It is entirely debatable wether the labels being attached to the children in any way represent real mental illness, or instead reflect certain peoples judgments about behavior.

We are told that the drugs themselves do not cause any ill effects, they are merely required to treat the problem, (in this case), the children. They tell us that these are societal illnesses 'clinical depressions' or schizophrenia's, and can be treated with the appropriate drugs. If this is true then why are such a high percentage of the children and young adults involved in school shootings on these antidepressant drugs? Jeff Weise who last week shot and murdered 9 people including his grandfather was taking the Prozac medication fluoxetine, and his dosage was increased 1 week before the shooting.

But of course these things are in no way connected. What is needed apparently, is to expand the number of children receiving these 'medicines'. Research has shown that these drugs can produce sleep depravation cycles, and lead to confusion between dream states and reality. Derangement of the forces that effect consciousness, and states of intense agitation and toxic central nervous system reactions have also been observed as side effects. But not to worry, it's for the benefit of your child!

The expansion of state power to cover all spectrums of society, and to provide intrusive and all pervasive psychological testing and drugging of young children (as well as many millions of adults), is another dangerous and frightening trend. Making early mental health screening a common practice in schools changes them. Instead of being places of learning and growth they become a recruitment centres for the diagnosis of alleged mental health problems in young children. The traditional school is replaced by a system where coercive force is applied both from inside the school, and from outside, by the mental health authorities providing the 'diagnosis' and the Pharmaceutical companies providing the 'medicine'. In this instance state 'access' to your child means their right to recruit your family into this system. The 'integration' of the various services to provide this health care, means your coercion into a closed loop of psychological evaluation, categorization, and treatment.

There are numerous natural alternatives to these horrible and ghoulish policies. Even accepting that some people do suffer from genuine forms of mental illness, there are other more natural ways to address the problems. Personally, I find it impossible to believe that 10 million children require daily doses of psycho-tropic medicine in order to be 'normal'. This is not the way to fight mental illness. Making the state 'god' over your child, and allowing them to determine his or her mental fitness, is nothing but Brave New World type thinking.