Next month, President Bush plans to unveil a broad new mental health plan called the “New Freedom Initiative.” Never mind that it couldn’t have less to do with freedom; if you’re a thinking American, this initiative should scare the hell out of you.

The New Freedom Initiative proposes to screen every American, including you, for mental illness. To this end, the president established a New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, to study the nation’s mental health delivery service and make a report. It’s interesting to note that many on the staff appointed to the Commission have served on the advisory boards of some of the nation’s largest drug companies.

The commission reported that “despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed,” so it recommended comprehensive mental health screening for “consumers of all ages,” including preschool children because “each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviors and emotional disorders.”

Children and school personnel will be the first to be screened. The panel concluded that schools are in “key positions” to screen the 52 million students and six million adults who work at the schools. By doing this, the commission expects to flush out another six million persons not now receiving treatment. But who will decide the screening criteria? Bush and his people? The drug companies? What are their qualifications?

One recommendation of the commission was that the screening be linked with “treatment and supports,” using “specific medications for specific conditions.” It is no coincidence that the treatments recommended for specific conditions are the newest state-of-the-art treatments that will bring in the most revenues for the drug companies. One of these emerging treatments is a capsule implanted within the body that delivers doses of medication without the patient having to swallow pills or take injections. If a government wanted to exert control of its citizens, think of the implications of using this device.

Now, obviously, it's hardly unknown for governments to use the treatment of "mental illness" as a device for controlling elements of the population that are considered dangerous to the powers that be (see the work of Thomas Szasz), but this report seems on the edge of being tin-foil-hattish to me, so I literally don't know what to think about it. Perhaps some of the readers of unfutz who are mental-health professionals can read the whole thing and post their comments here?

Update (8/22): Eliot Gelwan, proprietor of the Follow Me Here weblog, "the Oliver Sacks of weblogging" (according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), unfutz reader and practicing psychiatrist has posted his thoughts. Here's his concluding paragraph:

In short, the report is a puff piece that is not likely to turn into implementable policy. To the extent that it is, I think the concerns about "Bush wanting to be your shrink" are kneejerk alarmism. Although there are a range of issues about which to be concerned in the report, they are not the ones upon which the critics have so far focused. And while, in one alarmist's turn of phrase, "your first great freedom, the power to control your own thoughts, ... (and) your secondary freedom of being able to control the approval for your own medical treatments" are indeed important frontiers of modern freedom, the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health does not represent the immediate threat to them it is made out to be. Besides, Ashcroft will not be in charge of the mental health screening, and Bush and his intiiative will be out of office in January in any case, right?

There's a lot more of substance to Eliot's thoughts, of course, so hop on over and take a look.