Teenscreen - if you're not sure ... just label them suicidal

This came in on an email I got about Teenscreen. I hear some others have already adopted the teen screen model in some countries and made it mandatory. It is just like George Orwell's 1984 (yes I know I mentioned that before) - but really. I just don't get it like teenagers are committing suicide and throwing themselves out of the window all over the place? Not really - actually why don't we ask the psychiatric profession to supply the rest of society with helmets to protect themselves from the suicidal teenagers?

Jokes aside (actually if we did that people would see how stupid this program really is) it's like finding one problem and then adjusting the whole population to fit the minute possibility that all others are in the same category.

And in any case anything that checks for problems as a systematic check will eventually drive people nutty. There's got to be some evidence or an indication before the checks move in. The Vacin dillema is just one of the same.

Star Tribune

TEENSCREEN

Risks are too great

Your March 26 editorial made a spurious claim that since "schools screen for eye trouble. Why not for brain disorders?" Screening students to assess whether they are "at risk" for suicide or other mental health disorders is a highly subjective, unscientific and extremely difficult task.

David Shaffer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention reported that for every 16 students correctly identified by TeenScreen as "at risk," 84 were falsely labeled. Since the most common "treatment" for mental health disorders is drug therapy, TeenScreen leads to unnecessary drugging and the proven risks of serious side effects from these powerful psychotropic drugs.

TeenScreen has no place in the public school system. The risks to the mental and physical health of our students are too great.

BONNIE GASPER, EDEN PRAIRIE

Swisscom for Human Rights

I just heard that Swisscom the Swiss Mobile Phone company are showing the Human Rights Public Service announcements from YouthforHumanRights in their shops.

That's pretty cool - using all those Gadgets for something good!

A more positive note on some issues!

Human Rights in UK?

I picked this up from Engadget, I've posted on it before and it bears more mention.

I'm

If you're a regular reader of Engadget then you don't have to live in the UK to know that they loves 'em some surveillance technology. Last year, their Information Commissioner warned that the UK was running the risk of "sleep-walking into a surveillance society." Today, Jack Straw announced that the Commons' Home Affairs committee would be launching an inquiry into the growing use of surveillance. From the kingdom which gave us George Orwell and CCTV cameras with mics, speakers, and the intelligence to detect violent behavior and see through clothes, we're wondering if the move is already a tad too late. Of course, here in the US we shoot each other for game consoles so pick your poison.

What TeenScreen would prefer you didn't do

I got this in an email from a friend. They got this quote from an email that TeenScreen sent about the people ANTI TeenScreen. Well if they would prefer you don't see it, then I prefer you do.

Below is what TeenScreen does NOT want you to do as they elaborate here: http://dailykenoshan.com/images/news/ts/responding.pdf

Write Letters. To the local school board. To area school principals. To the local paper. To anyone who will listen.

Attend Local Meetings. Express your opinions at local community forums, such as school board meetings or town hall meetings.

Make Web Sites and Blogs. TeenScreen says: "information proliferated by these groups remains on their own Web sites and Web logs, or blogs. It is when members of your community find these sites that the information these groups disseminate becomes problematic."

So you know what to do now...

What part of 1984 did they not understand?

I read this article here on on the US Army wanting to install cameras around the world.

I think Engadget posted on something like this before about the UK having installed PA system to their CCTVs in the city.

Look I really think the people behind this misunderstood the point behind the book 1984. It wasn't an instruction manual for how to run a good government. It was a satire and a view on how bad it can become in the future!

No honestly, I doubt they misunderstood anything. But lest nobody read 1984 it's a great prediction of how sour the "total control government" can go.

Eh - the right to privacy anyone? The Universal Declaration on Human Rights? It was meant help people not to put in a file cabinet in a basement at the bottom of a flight of broken stairs, locked in a disused lavatory with a sign "Beware of the Leopard". [from Douglas Adam's Hitchickers Guide to the Galaxy]