Thursday, January 26, 2012

Medicating Your Child Without Telling You: HB900

Virginia House Bill #900, if enacted, would authorize "any licensed health professional" at a college to diagnose and treat your son's or daughter's mental health, without even notifying you, if they think telling you would be harmful to your college-aged offspring. Full text:

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB900

When teens and tweens are involved, the hypothetical test case typically invoked as an excuse for not notifying parents about various "services," including abortion as well as drugging, is that the parent would be likely to beat the child. Do college students live with abusive parents? I doubt it. The reason for not notifying parents is more likely to be that the parent might support the child's reservations, rather than agreeing that the college-aged child needs medication or hospitalization.

After all, if they had to tell you that the "treatment" for a complaint like "I'll never pass chemistry, so I might as well just drop out and check into a homeless shelter now" could involve violent insanity, you as a parent might suggest that a better treatment might be for your child to come home until s/he can change schools. And then the school might end up owing somebody a refund. And the money's probably been spent. What price the lives of a few dozen other bright young people, when the school stands to lose hundreds of dollars?

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