TMAP, the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, was initiated by Johnson & Johnson, together with other pharmaceutical producers, as a way to assure prescription of certain psychiatric medicines through State medical programs. The program, which was exposed by Allen Jones, an investigator turned whistleblower, is complemented by TeenScreen, a psychiatric screening program to be run in schools all over the US. The plan was to test kids by simple questionnaire and then prescribe them psychiatric drugs in accordance with TMAP, and it is being put into effect right now.
Allen Jones had filed a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson in 2004, but the case was sealed from public view until recently, when Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott joined the case.
A message from TeenScreenTruth calls on parents across the US to act to bring the fraudulent medication program and its sister, the screening scheme, to the attention of school boards, politicians and the media:
TeenScreen's Evil Sister - TMAP, Texas Medication Algorithm (guidelines) Project is a dastardly plan concocted by drug companies to influence government officials to push the newest most expensive antipsychotic drugs. The below story is the first of surely many more to come. Both TMAP and TeenScreen were "recommended" by the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.
Both are going to go down with a thud but your help is needed. To augment the national controversy, pick a school in your neck of the woods www.teenscreen-locations.com/index.htm and raise the dickens with school board members, legislators, newspapers, radio and your local TV news. Any talk radio show, for example, would be interested in what you have to say about the national controversy of TeenScreen asking kids as young as 9 years old questions about suicide and then referring them to "treatment" (drugs).
Meanwhile, the lawsuit filed by whistleblower Allen Jones looks set to bring some additional motion to the scene. With Medicaid all but bankrupt ... paying for expensive and often unnecessary medications, there might be a synergy of interests to recover some of the lost money for the State and save the children's sanity at the same time.
Here is 'the below story', an article about the lawsuit in the Austin American Statesman:
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Austin American Statesman
State's mental facilities duped into using drug, Abbott alleges
Lawsuit claims state official pushed drug, was rewarded with money.
By Jason Embry, W. Gardner Selby
December 16, 2006
A major corporation and several subsidiaries misrepresented the safety and effectiveness of an anti-psychotic drug and unduly influenced at least one state official to make it a standard treatment in public mental health programs, according to a lawsuit the state has joined.