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According to the Inquirer, Lilly gave NAMI $3 million between 2003 and 2005 and ?called its executive loans mutually beneficial.? NAMI's former executive director for 16 years was Laurie Flynn. Flynn is now the Director of Teenscreen, a psychiatric screening program developed by Columbia University's Child Psychiatry Research Department and, not surprisingly, recommended by the NFC. TeenScreen's goal is to screen all teenagers in the U.S. for psychiatric disorders.

NASC and screening: Educating Americans to be good customers

Since psychiatric drugging must, in most cases, be preceded by the assignment of a psychiatric label, psychiatric screening is an essential step in the industry's plans to expand its market. That's where the anti-stigma campaign and national psychiatric screening -- both recommended by the NFC -- come into play.

The NFC report recommended ?early detection of mental health problems in children and adults -- through routine and comprehensive testing and screening . . ." and while NFC chair Hogan has denied that the NFC intended universal screening, in a January 20, 2005 story in the Christian Science Monitor, Hogan said that the commission decided that recommending universal screening would be "a little premature and probably controversial, even though we thought, in the long run, it probably might be the right thing to do.?

In other words, the only barrier to screening everyone in America, as the NFC sees it, is the controversy it would generate. It's ?premature.? Americans have to be prepared to accept mass psychiatric interventions. SAMHSA's NFC-recommended NASC program is their answer -- a three-year, ?long run? program to prepare the population for universal screening, followed, of course, by psychiatric labeling and drugging.

The NASC campaign will advertise that mental illness has reached epidemic levels in the population -- a theme that has been repeated in psychiatric marketing campaigns dating back to the 1940s. The psychiatric industry wants Americans to see mental illness everywhere -- to associate any problem in life with a possible psychiatric disorder that can be treated with a psychiatric drug.

A PowerPoint presentation available at the NASC website warns that ?22% of Americans have a diagnosable mental health problem? but ?the majority . . . do not seek help.? SAMHSA has produced three brochures that focus on the workplace (Mental Health: It's Part of Our Lives at Work), the elderly (Mental Health: It's Part of Aging) and college students (Mental Health: It's Part of College Life). All state that one in five adults in the U.S. experience a mental illness each year. All stress that not enough people are seeking treatment due to stigma.

At the same time SAMHSA's Eliminating Barriers Initiative (EBI) is currently being pushed into secondary schools via school administrators' associations. EBI is being piloted in eight states, (Mass., Ohio, Fla., NC, Calif., Texas, Wisc. Pa.). EBI training presentations promoting psychiatric chemical imbalance theories, stating, ?Mental illnesses are brain disorders.?

In Massachusetts, the commissioner of Mental Health was brought to one conference and read a student's suicide note to the assembled school administrators. Suicide is a favorite theme, even though 1) child suicides are extremely rare (4.6 per 100,000 in 2001, according to the Center for Disease Control) and declining; 2) In 2004, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) found ?no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality? and "insufficient evidence that treatment of those at high risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality;? and 3) psychiatric drug treatment has been found to increase suicidal thinking and behavior in children under 18.

The goal of such programs is clear. SAMHSA, acting as a tool of the psychiatric and drug industries, wants Americans to view the world through psychiatric lenses -- to find mental illness in their children, their colleagues, their family and friends. The purpose of the NASC campaign is not to educate Americans about psychiatric theories and treatments but to instill acceptance of psychiatric dogma and psychiatric labeling and thus prepare the way for psychiatric screening and drugging. Always the appeal is heavily weighted to the emotions. The elderly brochure, for example, advises, ?If you feel shame because you have a mental illness remember: You are not alone.? SAMHSA will tell us that fear of the mentally ill is part of the stigma, while, at the same time, they will be sowing a subliminal fear that mental illness is lurking around every corner.

The NASC campaign will spread the gospel of chemical imbalances and suggest that the stigma of mental illness is the result of public ignorance and fear. This is a key element of NASC. Americans must be taught to locate the source of the stigma in their own personal failure, not the rampant disease mongering and fear tactics of the psychiatric industry.

The real source of the stigma

The real source of the stigma of mental illness lies in the definition of stigma itself. The dictionary says a stigma is ?A mark or token of infamy, disgrace or reproach. A small mark; a scar or birthmark.? The word derives from the ancient word for the mark or tattoo that was carved or burned into the flesh of a slave or prisoner to inform everyone of their shameful status.

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