DADI.org

by Arianna Huffington

Filed June 10, 1999

I don't know what it is about Al Gore, but hyperbole just happens around him. For months, the nation has been told that Tipper Gore, with the vice president by her side, of course, would preside over a ``historic'' White House Conference on Mental Health, featuring ``cutting-edge'' discoveries in the field. In fact, the conference turned out to be mainly a cheerleading session for drug manufacturers, with Tipper pumping her fists and giving the thumbs-up from the stage.

At a time when, following the rash of school shooting tragedies, we are calling on parents and communities to get more involved in the lives of children, the conference traced all mental and emotional problems to the biochemistry of the brain. Dr. Harold Koplewicz, director of New York University's Child Studies Center, said that it was an ``antiquated way of thinking'' to blame ``inadequate parenting and bad childhood traumas'' for depression. And the first lady, who not long ago told the world that it takes a village to properly raise children, raised no objections. Are we now to believe that it takes a pill?

Even after Koplewicz blamed school violence on ``depression or other mental health problems'' that go untreated, no one in that conference challenged the good doctor by reminding him that in fact three of the recent shooters had been treated -- Springfield's Kip Kinkel with Prozac, Littleton's Eric Harris with Luvox and Conyers' Thomas Solomon with Ritalin.

``Both plenary sessions,'' said Sally Zinman, director of the California Network of Mental Health Clients, ``were an infomercial for drugs. There was absolutely no mention of the potential risks.'' For that you have to go to the complaint just filed in the Superior Court of California by the estate of Brynn Hartman, wife of comedian Phil Hartman, who killed her husband and herself while on Zoloft. ``Although none of the drug manufacturers will admit it,'' reads the complaint, ``these drugs pose an unreasonable risk of violent and suicidal behavior for a small percentage of patients. They can also cause a condition known as `emotional blunting,' or disinhibition.'' As well as Zoloft's manufacturer, Pfizer, Hartman's estate is suing the doctor who, it claims, gave her a sample package of the drug without a proper diagnosis. Pfizer is also being sued in Kansas by the family of a 13-year-old boy who hanged himself while on Zoloft.

But the conference organizers seemed intent on avoiding all the tough questions while engaging in insidious hyperbole. The conference's literature states that ``13.7 million of the nation's children have a diagnosable mental illness.'' When I asked Mrs. Gore's press secretary how the conference came up with this number, she referred me to the White House press office, which in turn referred me to the Health and Human Services Department, which sent me to the American Psychiatric Association and its director of research. The problem is that Dr. Harold Pincus had never heard of this number. It turns out that it is based on a Florida Mental Health Institute study which states that the upper limit of an estimate of ``youth with any diagnosable disorder'' is 20 percent. And yet despite repeated warnings in the study that we don't have the ability to project national rates, this number is already being bandied about by members of Congress as official.

If one in five children in this country is mentally ill, it is time to declare a national emergency. But this is true only in the brains of those who lump serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia with the garden-variety depression that comes with being alive. And it is particularly disturbing when drugs are used to keep so-called mentally ill children docile, as occurred in California's foster and group home system, where children were given antidepressants in dosages that psychiatric experts said could cause irreversible harm.

How come no one in the plenary sessions mentioned that these little panaceas might actually cause harm? Because, as Dr. Peter Breggin, author of ``Talking Back to Ritalin,'' put it: ``The drug companies call the tune. The problem with this biochemical model is that by blaming the brain of the child, even for commonplace sadness and anxiety, we take parents, teachers, politicians and all of society off the hook for the widespread suffering of our children.''

Fortunately, some politicians, including Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who led the Children's Mental Health breakout session at the conference, are not letting themselves off the hook. ``My focus,'' she told me, ``has been not on drug therapy but on how children can be made whole. I've seen the changes that happen when you put your hands around a troubled child by providing a nurturing environment. In our session we talked about mentoring, and about not coming in and telling parents what to do, but engaging them in a plan for their child.''

But the overwhelming impression left by the conference was that of the Clintons and the Gores endorsing a purely pharmacological view of humanity. The conference was supposed to ``burst myths'' about mental illness, but it never got to the truth behind the myths: that human beings consist of a soul as well as a brain. And there will never be a drug to cure a troubled soul.

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