The National Pulse: Mother Denied Parental Rights over Transgender Teen Appeals Court Ruling

Last month, Dr. Effrem described the bizarre and dangerous Minnesota federal court decision that “emancipated” a minor child from his mother, thereby denying her inherent parental right to direct the academic, medical, and other aspects of the care and upbringing of her own son — all without any of the due process normally involved in such situations.

The story continues:

According to the Minnesota Child Protection League (CPL), an organization which has been supporting Ms. Calgaro’s efforts, attorneys for the district made the situation painfully worse:

Attorneys for the school district went on to state that, since Calgaro had filed a lawsuit to assert her parental rights, her request should be denied in order to protect her son from “further harm.”  Consider that. The school administration is empowered to decide that Calgaro is harmful to her son because she challenged the violation of her parental rights in court.

Continue to read!

The National Pulse: Federal Court Upholds Child’s “Emancipation” from Mother by State Agencies

Dr. Karen Effrem needles through the haystack of destruction, parents beware!

The State of Minnesota is rapidly earning the dubious distinction of leading the nation in the destruction of parental rights and autonomy. A federal district court judge just dismissed a mother’s lawsuit, essentially upholding Minnesota’s very harmful and unconstitutional “emancipation statute” that allows minor children — with the aid of outside groups — to leave their families whenever there is conflict, as long as the child is living independently and can support himself or herself. This removes parents from decision-making or receiving information about their child’s schooling, medical care, or emotional health, and it is all done without a court hearing and due process.

The other way that Minnesota is trampling on parental rights is by ignoring the Trump administration’s rescission of the dangerous and lawless Obama administration’s Title IX “guidance” on transgender students and athletes. Instead, the Minnesota Department of Education is bullying school boards and other school officials into believing that the Obama edict is still in place and that, legally, they must comply. The harmful implications to parental rights are also severe!

Federal Court Upholds Child’s “Emancipation” from Mother by State Agencies

Written Testimony – Mandated School Mental Health Curricula

Written Testimony on SF 261 – Mandated School Mental Health Curricula
Karen R. Effrem, MD
President – Education Liberty Watch

Thank you, Senator Torres-Ray, for your concern for children and youth and for the mentally ill.  Although the intentions are good, Education Liberty Watch has many concerns with SF 261, including dilution of academic curriculum content, loss of local control and cost for already strapped districts, our biggest ones are the subjectivity of mental health diagnosis, controversies in treatment, huge potential for political bias in diagnosis and treatment, and conflict of interest of the pharmaceutical industry, none of which are discussed in the national health education standards.  We believe that this bill would create a biased and potentially dangerous curriculum for students. Here are a few examples:

• Even the top echelon of experts in psychiatry admit that diagnosis is very subjective:

Dr. Dilip Jeste, president of the American Psychiatric Association, in a statement on the completion of the new about to be published edition of the bible of psychiatric diagnosis, the Diagnositc and Statistical Manual (DSM-V), said last December:  “At present, most psychiatric disorders lack validated diagnostic biomarkers, and although considerable advances are being made in the arena of neurobiology, psychiatric diagnoses are still mostly based on clinician assessment.”  In plain English, that means that all psychiatric diagnosis is an educated guess.

Dr. Allen Frances, chief editor of the current edition of the DSM put it much more bluntly in a 2010 interview:  “…there is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bull****. I mean, you just can’t define it.”

• The DSM-5 committee debated adding extreme racism and homophobia as a new diagnosis in the most recent version of the diagnostic manual set to come out this Spring (2013).

“Doctors who treat inmates at the California State Prison outside Sacramento concur: They have diagnosed some forms of racist hatred among inmates and administered antipsychotic drugs. ‘We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders,’ said Shama Chaiken, who later became a divisional chief psychologist for the California Department of Corrections, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. ‘Treatment with antipsychotics does work to reduce these prejudices.’” (Vedatam, 12/10/05, Washington Post, emphasis added)

“As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.  Advocates have circulated draft guidelines and have begun to conduct systematic studies. While the proposal is gaining traction, it is still in the early stages of being considered by the professionals who decide on new diagnoses.” (Vedatam, 12/10/05, Washington Post, emphasis added)

• The latest changes in the DSM are very controversial and according to experts like Dr. Frances and others will lead to even more over-diagnosis and more over-treatment with medications that have very limited efficacy and severe or fatal side effects

The decision to create a pediatric bipolar diagnosis in the current DSM-4 led to a 40 fold increase in that diagnosis in children, affecting African-American children most severely.  This is probably because Medicaid is the largest purchaser of antipsychotic medications used to treat those labeled with this disorder.

In the new DSM, about to be published this year, temper tantrums are now to be labeled as Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder and the manifestations of the normal process of grief are now considered symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder.

• The side effects of medications used to treat mental illness are very significant and severe:

To varying degrees,  all psychiatric drugs are associated with both increased suicidal thoughts and ideation as well as akathesia, an extreme inner sense of agitation, which can and has been associated with at least 64 incidents of violence at schools, including mass shootings like Columbine, Red Lake, and as it appears, Newtown.  There are at least two reports that have not been discredited that Adam Lanza was on some type of medication.  Here is a chart showing the gun related incident resulting in deaths in the US derived from www.ssristories.org:

Antipsychotics (Zyprexa, Seroquel, etc.) – 25 year shorter life span, brain shrinkage, severe neurological problems in 60% of children that take them, more severe metabolic problems than in adults that include diabetes, weight gain, male breast development, as well as heart attack and stroke in young people.

Antidepressants (Prozac, Paxil, etc.)– For young people under 24, these drugs carry the FDA’s black box warning, the most severe warning short of a ban because of suicidal thoughts and attempts.  They also cause akathesia, even more so than the antidepressants.

ADHD Drugs (Ritalin, Adderall, etc.) – Associated with psychosis, hallucinations, sudden cardiac death and weight loss Continue reading »

Written Testimony SF 481/ HF 1058 – Early Childhood Scholarships

Written Testimony on SF 481/HF 1058 – Early Childhood Scholarships

Karen R. Effrem, MD

President – Education Liberty Watch

Although this bill is less onerous than the language in the governor’s education finance bill regarding parental rights, family sovereignty, and the rights of conscience, we still have a number of concerns

1)      Internal language inconsistency  – Lines 1.10-1.14 of the bill say:

1.10 Subd. 2. Duties. The Office of Early Learning shall administer the early learning

1.11scholarship program, establish participation standards for children and their families,

1.12develop criteria for qualifying providers based on section 124D.142, and contract for

1.13administrative services as necessary with a resource and referral organization under

1.14section 119B.19, or other nonprofit or public entity.

If the Office of Early Learning determines “criteria for qualifying providers” how does that square with lines 3.9-3.10 that say:

 Subd. 7. Scholarship recipient choice of programs. A scholarship recipient may
3.10choose to apply to any rated program or prospective program for acceptance.

What is to say that the Office of Early Learning won’t say later that recipients must choose a 3 or 4 star rated program such as required in the governor’s finance bill?  We are particularly concerned about the Parent Aware requirement to align curriculum and assessments to the Early Childhood Indicators of Progress (ECIP) in order to receive a three or four star rating, which I will discuss more below.  We also want to know whether it is the language of this bill or the governor’s bill that will be included in final legislation and which part of the language of this bill.

2)      Childcare and preschool programs that accept scholarship recipients will be considered subsidized for the purposes of unionization – This will increase costs and decrease access for these poor and middle class families analogously to what is happening to physicians who cannot afford to take care of Medicaid and Medicare patients under the Affordable Care Act.

3)      Cost – The governor’s finance bill calls for a 733% increase in funding for these scholarships over current levels.  This bill’s funding for 2014 is a 1,300% increase and a 1,750% increase in 2015 when there is still a deficit in Minnesota, much less the federal government, the threat of unionization and higher taxes, other needs in education, little proof that they will work, and a still quite shaky national economy.

4)      Many large centers and Head Start programs receive automatic four star ratings putting small programs at a disadvantage – According to the Parent Aware evaluation two thirds of programs received automatic four star ratings.  This is especially problematic for Head Start, when the most recent of over 600 studies released in 2010 and 2012 showed that there was no benefit to the program after 1^st grade and harm to math skills of three year old participants. Smaller programs and individual providers will find it harder to compete.

5)      Mandated curriculum standards for early childhood that apply to private and religious programs that take subsidies – If the 3 or 4 star rating requirement remains, all programs that take subsidized students must align their curriculum and assessments to the ECIP.  This is especially problematic in the social and emotional area, because the state is now mandating one set of standards for thought, behavior, and belief that, no matter one view’s on any given subject, it is the right and authority of parents to inculcate those values in their children, not taxpayer funded education institutions.  Doing ratings and assessments of little children and eventually teacher/caregiver merit pay systems on one set of very subjective standards like this is extraordinarily problematic.  It could also lead to unnecessary over diagnosis and treatment for mental health issues.   We have heard through the grapevine that these standards are being rewritten to remove some of the more controversial items.  That is good, but we still question the authority of the state to be determining norms in this area at all and imposing them of private and religious providers.  Some of the more egregious examples of the ECIP, with definitional quotes and my comments are as follows: Continue reading »