A letter to the Editor

Lawrence Journal World and News

Lawrence, Kansas

Mental illness

November 16, 2007

To the editor:
Gun control is the wrong target to stop atrocities like the Virginia Tech shootings. It is time to look at the true cause of the killings: antidepressants. In the Virginia tech shooting, Columbine and seven other shootings, psychiatric drugs were the common factor.

The Food and Drug Administration has already stated that antidepressants cause suicidal behavior, mania, psychosis, hallucinations and hostility. The black warning labels on these drugs were put there for a reason, and these drugs are given to people without proper cause and too freely.

Now, President Bush’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health wants to screen all schoolchildren for mental illness. The law has been passed in some states, and the program is called TeenScreen. Normal kids are labeled mentally ill with an array of disorders such as mathematics disorder, reading disorder, conduct disorder, just to name a few. This is ludicrous, and parents need to be aware of what is happening so they don’t let their children fall into a statistic.

Despite the evidence linking psychiatric drugs to suicide and violence, these drugs are prescribed to millions of children and teens based on subjective diagnoses made without any physical tests, such as blood tests, brain scans or X-rays.

It is time to take a stand and quit drugging our children. Let them have a life, not be turned into zombies because someone doesn’t want to “put up with them.”

Melanie Wertin,

Lecompton

Letter to the editor here: http://www2.ljworld.com/submit/letter_to_the_editor/