Florida “School Safety” Bill Would Make Schools Anything But Safe - The National Pulse

This excerpt is from a follow-up to the recent article by Dr. Effrem on the Parkland shooting and discusses the dangers of knee-jerk legislative responses to complex problems: But the most dangerous and unrecognized part of this bill is the increased psychiatric screening of "at-risk" students and the training of teachers to recognize the signs of mental illness and violence, imposing on them the responsibility to intervene.Both sides used mental health issues as a scapegoat. Leaving the gun issues aside for a moment, not only will the mental health provisions do little to protect students in schools, they will harm essential liberties like freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, data privacy, and parental autonomy. By greatly increasing the potential for more students to be labeled and drugged with medications like ADHD drugs (which the Parkland shooter was reportedly taking) that are known to be associated with increased hostility and violence, it may also increase the incidence of these horrific events.There are two aspects of the mental health issues in this bill that especially need more attention.First is the hypocrisy of saying that it is wrong, dangerous, and too burdensome to give teachers and other school staff the voluntary option to be trained to carry weapons if the sheriff and the school board agree, but not saying the same of turning already overburdened teachers into psychologists to recognize mental health challenges and intervene. It is illogical and dangerous to the majority of other students to have teachers, who are unqualified in this realm, try to do -- after only a few hours of training -- what psychiatric professionals, who are trained for years, freely admit that they cannot do: predict who will become violent. Here is Dr. Julian Ford, professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut, who had extensively analyzed the life of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, speaking to the Los Angeles Times about the similarities between Parkland Read more

Posted in Psychological Manipulation. Tagged as Baker Act, Obama administration, Parkland shooting, psychiatric screening, School Climate Grants.

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