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SPEARHEADING SOCIAL REFORM
Drugging and Labeling of Children
Psychiatric drugs have even become entrenched in the educational system. Ritalin, a powerful amphetamine-like drug prescribed by psychiatrists for so-called hyperactive children of all ages, has turned essentially normal, healthy children into depressed, listless and sometimes violent or suicidal addicts. In fact, Ritalin is bought on the street by heroin addicts. In the 1980s, a CCHR educational program warned parents of the dangers of Ritalin and cautioned them against claims that their children might be suffering from the stigma of “mental illness” simply because psychiatrists had chosen to label them so.
Indeed, the prescribing of Ritalin or any one of the hundreds of other psychiatric drugs to children is symptomatic of a much larger problem: the fraudulent diagnoses of “mental disorders” in children.
The lamentable truth is that every normal aspect of childhood behavior falls within the broad spectrum of “symptoms” which comprise so-called “mental illness.” By reading the “bible” of mental illness, psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in the US, or its international counterpart, one could be led to believe that everyone is mentally ill. Psychiatry has literally covered every base with its invented criteria. Consider this: In 1880 there were seven categories of mental disturbance; in 1952, the first year the DSM was published, the number leaped to 112; in 1980 there were 224 mental disorders; and, by 1994 the number had climbed to 374.
Increased diagnostic capabilities? Hardly. This epidemic of mental disease is more likely to have its roots in the fact that once a new “illness” is listed in the DSM, insurance companies and governments are willing to pay for the “treatment” which today is usually a regimen of psychiatric drugs.
 
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