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http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0710/S00389.htm

New Psychological Testing of Children is Abusive

Sunday, 28 October 2007, 1:38 pm
Press Release: Citizens Commission on Human Rights

Citizens Commission On Human Rights New Zealand Established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights

New Psychological Testing of Children is Abusive

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights are warning people about behavioural screening programmes for children and the use of drugs for learning disorders in an exhibition now on.

Commission director, Mr Steve Green is concerned about the new “b4 school checks” pilot programme currently being advertised by the Counties Manukau District Health Board because of their psychological screening component for four-year-olds.

“People are not aware that these psychological screening programmes are not based on medicine and the assessments often lead to treatment of fictitious mental disorders,” Mr Green said.

The Commission said that the psychological testing of four-year-old for behavioural problems to be used by the “b4 school check” programme is a five-minute checklist a parent fills out.

Such tests, the Commission claims, are unscientific as they claim that a small child who cannot stay still for long and who fidgets is abnormal.

The Goodman Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire is the one being used in the “b4 school check” for psychological and behavioural problems and its results can be wildly out with over 50% of children apparently abnormal, the Commission claims.

The Commission fully supports the actual health checks for the “b4 school checks” but says the psychological testing stigmatizes children with mental disorders that in reality do not exist.

“These labels stay with a person for ever and most people are not aware that mental disorders are voted into being by a panel of psychiatrists at a convention. There are no scientific or medical tests that support mental illness or disorders,” said Mr Green.

He also said that psychiatry has no test for normal behaviour and so the abnormal can be cultural and language differences which are not taken into account.

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