Press
Release for Immediate Release
Patricia
Weathers, President 845-677-8115
Sheila Matthews, National Vice President 203-966-8419
5/20/04
ACCESS
DENIED TO PARENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
A
National Crisis on Informed Consent
May
19, 2004, a national news story ran out of Connecticut regarding a 7-year-old
child that attacked a teacher, after he would not stop tapping his pencil.
The school called in the police to subdue the child.
The fact is, that this isn’t the first problem Stratford Elementary
School has had with its teaching style and psychological services.
On
February 12, 2004, Connecticut Stratford Police were called to Nichols
Elementary School when a mother of an 8-year-old boy told police that the school
administrators physically abused her son who had been diagnosed with the
subjective label “ADHD”.
Ablechild.org
contacted both the elementary school and the Stratford police department to
request that information on the current federal Investigation into the use of
behavioral drugs for children, be provided to both parents with children
involved in the recent acts occurring at the school.
Ablechild.org stressed to the police department the importance of
providing this information to the parents to ensure that they were given proper
informed consent. The Stratford
Police department, though sympathetic to our request, referred us to the board
of education, which outright refused our organization’s request.
We strongly urged the board to provide information to the parents on the
current federal investigation into the dangerous drug ‘treatment” for the
controversial label “ADHD” to comply with full informed consent.
This
raises serious questions regarding the lack of information parents are receiving
about the label “ADHD”, behavioral drugs linked to bizarre behaviors, and
suicide ideations in children that are currently under review on the Federal
level.
On
May 17, 2004
CBS 11 out of DALLAS-FORT WORTH Report By Investigator Ginger Allen and
Producer/Photojournalist Dave Manoucheri revealed that, “Medicating
children to control behavior has become a trend over the last decade, but now
drug manufacturers and even the U.S. government are in the hot seat, questioned
about a potentially deadly side-effect of what is supposed to be a
life-saver.”
Informed consent is such an important part of the decision making process for all parents. This is a national crisis when 7 and 8 year olds need to be restrained by the police. It is time we look at the psychological programs at these elementary schools to ensure that proper informed consent is occurring.