Doctor speaks out against plan to test all kids for mental problems

• Congress and President Bush apparently think that a lot of children have a "mental health" problem.
• Or that enough of them do to justify taking millions of dollars from taxpayers to fund a universal "mental health screening" for children, and eventually for everyone.
• Personally, I think -- from the perspective of a person who never had any -- that almost all children act crazy.
• On the farm there is a solution for that: a procedure for turning boy lambs into non-ram lambs.
• We don't do surgery like that on little boys, of course, but we do have our methods: such as behavioral therapy and chemicals.
• Bad, disruptive, antisocial or depressed little kids make lots of trouble for parents and schoolteachers.
• That snotty little boy might become a dissenting, nonconformist or even a rebellious man, who could throw a monkey wrench into our smoothly functioning society.
• A bonus is that your little darlings will probably give them quite a bit of information about you also, and then you too can receive therapy you didn't know you needed.
• Drugs (Ritalin, antidepressants, tranquilizers, maybe some new ones that need to be tested on some experimental subjects of your child's age).
• If an interview with a child raises concerns, the next step might be a home visit.
• This could discover poor parenting skills, inadequate housekeeping, harmful literature, or a baby who is crying or has a bruise (signs of abuse?).
• The mental health workers' impressions will all be recorded in the school records.
• Should an extremist Christian be one of the screeners, he might think that nonbelievers are possessed by the devil.
• Can you refuse to participate in the program?
• Miraculously, throughout human history most of those crazy children have become stable, productive adults without federally mandated psychiatric treatment.