According to the well known one world conspiracy theorist and radio talk show host Alex Jones Congress passed a bill that would require kids to be psychologically tested in school. He claimed that Drug companies like Lilly had even had memos leaked suggesting that the new legislation would cause an increase in the percentage of kids using psychotropic drugs from the current 10% to almost 50%. Is this complete BS or is there some truth to his assertion? What happens if I refuse to let my kid be tested? How about if he’s tested and I don’t want him on drugs? Would this affect homeschoolers as well (that is if it is not complete BS).
The Health and Human Services budget for fiscal year 2005 (part of Public Law 108-447), which was passed by Congress in December, includes new grants to the states for mental health care as recommended by the 2003 report of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. The report did recommend a greater role for schools in mental health care, and greater use of mental health screening, but did not recommend mandatory testing of all school children.
Representative Ron Paul, Republican from Texas introduced an amendment to the appropriations bill that would have prohibited the money being used for mandatory mental health screening of all school children. His amendment failed to pass. That does not mean that the money will now be used for mandatory screening. It is up to each state to determine how the money will be spent. As far as I know, none of the states has announced that it plans to use the money to instiutue mandatory testing.
I work at a private school. We go through hoops trying to get parents to agree to testing in cases where their kids have obvious problems and would benefit from diagnosis. Given HIPAA and all, mandatory testing strikes me as highly dubious.