The Making of Mental Patients --"TeenScreen" diagnoses high schoolers

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The Making of Mental Patients
Inside TeenScreen
By SANDRA LUCAS

In October, 2004, after taking TeenScreen, a 10-minute computer test developed in the psychiatric department of Columbia University, 16-year-old Chelsea Rhoades of Indiana was told she had two mental health problems, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and social anxiety disorder. The diagnoses were based upon Chelsea's responses that she liked to help clean the house and didn't "party" much.

Chelsea is one of countless children who get labeled with fraudulent diagnoses every day. The difference in her case is that her parents, who were unaware that TeenScreen had infiltrated their daughter's school and had not given permission for the screening, reacted quickly. They filed a lawsuit against the officials of the high school who allowed the test to be administered and the TeenScreen program. In doing so, the Rhoades took a stand for all parents across the nation.

The unscientific nature of psychiatric labeling was admitted to by the American Psychiatric Association's own president, Steven Sharfstein, when he stated on June 27, 2005, during an interview on the Today Show, "We do not have a clean cut lab test "


http://www.counterpunch.com/lucas12302005.html