Mental Health Veto Editorial
Texas Legislature Parties Like It’s 1938
Inadvertently Passes Modern Nuremberg Laws
VETO SB 460 and HB 3793!!!
In the final days of the 83rd Texas Legislature, mental health advocates used a last minute amendment process to amend SB 460 and HB 3793 with a set of mental health requirements that will potentially circumvent parental rights, drastically increase labeling and drugging of children, and lead to new gun control measures in Texas.
In a nutshell, the 1938 Nuremberg laws of Nazi Germany redefined a specific group of people, then outlined the legal way to systematically take their rights away. Most legislators don’t realize what they have done and their ignorance of history and arrogance has led them to pass prolific mental health legislation that will be used to take certain rights away from EVERY citizen!
Under Nuremberg laws, Jews were officially defined and identified. Much like people today being labeled with mental disorders (defined and identified through “early mental health intervention and prevention” schemes), Jews could be legally segregated socially, politically, and economically from other German citizens and then subjected to a separate set of laws that only applied to them. Mental health advocates have been working overtime to create a separate set of laws that apply to citizens deemed “mentally ill.” The Nuremberg laws eventually led to Jews being subjected to further humiliation and “easy detection” by forcing them to sew a yellow star onto their clothing as well as the “J” mark on their documentation papers.
Mental Health labeling could be the next “yellow star” applied to any citizen if they are labeled “mentally ill,” regardless of race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status. Unlike the yellow star during the Holocaust, this yellow star knows no boundaries. With modern technology, the government no longer needs people to sew stars on their clothing – mental health registries and electronic medical “passports” as they are sometimes called – will suffice. In the future, laws could be passed to denote which disorder a person is labeled with on their driver’s license, for instance. A police officer or mental health deputy (yes these already exist) could easily see what “yellow star” a person has by looking at their license or passport – “D” for depression, “S” for schizophrenia, “B” for bipolar “P” for post-traumatic stress disorder and so on – so that the officer can quickly assess the “risk of harm” a person might pose to themselves or others and then apply the separate mental health law to them.
In the wake of several school shootings, there is already national talk of mental health registries in order to limit the supposedly mentally ill from purchasing guns. Mental health commitment procedures already exist and are being expanded. With the passing of this new set of mental health laws in Texas, the door to mental health screening, citizen tracking, and constitutional abuses was thrown wide open – all under the guise of protecting and helping the innocent.
Specifically, SB 460 requires mental health training for ALL teachers and school personnel and expands the power of local school health advisory boards (SHACs) to include mental health curriculum in regular health classes without permission from parents. The boards will also recommend mental health policies, procedures, and strategies to school districts. Besides being an unfunded mandate to schools and parents being left out of the process while their children are indoctrinated with mental health information provided and funded by pharmaceutical companies, there is also a provision in SB 460 that allows a huge conflict of interest to be added to the boards.
Local mental health providers and substance abuse treatment providers who have a financial interest in getting kids into their treatment programs will be added to the school health advisory boards. This conflict of interest allows drug companies who fund the local treatment providers to have a direct line to children in public schools! And by teaching children the “signs and symptoms” of mental health problems in their health classes, children will be taught to “self-identify” their own mental health problems – circumventing the important parental consent to screening step that exists to protect children from harm and keeps parents in control.
HB 3793 was heavily amended to include mental health legislation that was not passed out of the public health committee and allow teachers to complete a program called “mental health first aid” as part of their continuing education. This program is being touted nationally as part of President Obama’s gun control measures in the wake of the Connecticut incident. In January, Connecticut introduced its own mental health screening measure for all children, SB 374, that would require ALL school children, including home schooled children, to receive comprehensive behavioral health assessments – public school children at grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 and each home-schooled child at ages 12, 14, and 17. If this law passes, verification forms would be sent to the State Board of Education to verify that each child received the assessment! Let the tracking begin . . .
One of the goals of Texas SB 3793 is to “maximize the number of children who have direct contact with an individual who has successfully completed a mental health first aid training program” and the local mental health authority is required to keep track of the number of employees and contractors of the authority, educators, and non-educators trained in the program. Mental health first aid goes beyond the walls of intervening with people a person knows. It actually trains people to be the mental health “stasi” and intervene with total strangers concerning their mental health! An example was given in public testimony about a woman questioning the mental health of a complete stranger because she she appeared distressed and was surrounded by books about depression – thus the need in the bill to dismiss any liability for a person “who in good faith attempts to assist an individual experiencing a mental health crisis.”
Both Texas bills are filled with overbearing, overstepping, and overprotecting mental health stipulations that will change the face of the Texas mental health forever and lead to more labeling, drugging, and profits for drug companies.
Here is a sample of the kinds of limitations and separate laws people labeled “mentally ill” are currently facing:
Labeled CHILDREN:
• Forced drugging
• Forced psychiatric hospitalization
• Forced inpatient or outpatient medication monitoring and compliance
• Child Protective Services involvement if a parent disagrees with diagnosis or treatment of their child (medical neglect)
• Termination of their own parental rights when they grow up due to their own “long-term” mental illness
• Deemed in need of special education by schools
• Barred from military service
Labeled ADULTS:
• Gun control
• Mental health registries
• Forced commitment laws
• Forced outpatient medication compliance and monitoring
• Forced inpatient hospital commitment and drugging
• Termination of parental rights due to “long-term” mental illness
• Child Protective Services involvement if a parent disagrees with diagnosis or treatment of their child (medical neglect)
Ironically, the NRA is leading the charge against mentally labeled people in a very “We aren’t Jews” kind of way and pushing for more mental health laws and restrictions in an effort to avert gun control. But their misguided effort will lead to MORE people prohibited from owning guns, not less! Stick up for the currently labeled people before it’s too late and you or your children recieve the label too!
Citizens have the power NOW to stop this dangerous and expansive mental health legislation that has gotten out of hand and will effect ALL people in some way in the future, whether or not they are labeled yet. Don’t let the government force a yellow star on you, your children, your friends, your family members, or strangers . . .
Call Governor Perry’s office and DEMAND a veto of SB 460 and HB 3793. CALL his Opinion Line 512-463-1782 and tell him what you think of their yellow star!
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