Health Impact News Editor Comments
In 2015, Health Impact News published an article from Nehemiah Flynt, a former foster parent who left the foster care system after seeing how corrupt it was. Nehemiah exposed how CPS often takes children away from loving parents. He noticed that almost all of the foster children were drugged:
I began to notice a pattern. At least 90% of the children entering my home were on medication for labels such as ADD, ADHD, or ODD.
I didn’t understand that. I began researching statistics and realized that children in foster care were being labeled with hyperactivity disorders at rates well above those of children in mainstream society. I wondered why…
Nehemiah left the foster care system, and became part of a ministry that worked with troubled youth without using drugs or mental health services. It was a highly successful program, but soon CPS came knocking on his door:
Child Protective Services got wind of our program. They didn’t like the fact that we were teaching our youth Biblical standards, a work ethic, that they were not victims of society but were responsible for the choices they were making, and that medication was not the answer to all of life’s problems. They placed a target on our heads and did everything in their power to override our constitutional rights and to stop the work we were doing.
They have an agenda to medicate as many children as they can, to label them with mental health disorders, and to stop anyone who stands in their way – at any cost.
Read the full article here. [1]
Is this the state of “Child Protection Services” in the United States today? Have we as a society allowed the government and their social services programs to redefine “abuse” and “health”? Is “abuse” and “mental health” now defined as the absence of psychiatric drugs?
Who are the true abusers of today’s troubled youth?
I asked Nehemiah Flynt to describe the former program he worked in that was so successful, that it became a threat to CPS and the psychiatric drug industry.
You may not agree with everything Nehemiah and the people involved in his program were doing with these troubled youth, but is the alternative government-approved system truly better? Should American taxpayer funds be used to attack non-government private non-profit programs like this where troubled youth and families willingly participate, rather than being kidnapped from their families and being forced into a foster care system that gives them little to no chance to succeed in life?
Hyperactive Children Do Not Need Medication or Mental-health Therapy
by Nehemiah Flynt
Special to Health Impact News
“Approved” Mental Health Therapies Risky and Not Effective
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) website [2],
“Children who begin medication therapies very early and receive treatment on a long-term basis may have unknown risks associated with current treatments. Additionally, pharmacologic interventions often do not normalize behavior. Research, albeit limited, suggests that even with long-term treatment, children and adults with ADHD experience substantial problems in the school, home, workplace, and community settings.”
The same site adds,
“…the majority of youth receiving psychological interventions for ADHD are probably receiving treatments that have not been shown to be effective, such as individual therapy and/or play therapy.” (Source. [2])
This information from the CDC should be quite alarming to parents throughout the United States who have been coerced by public school officials, doctors, and mental-health professionals into placing their hyperactive children on mind-altering drugs and/or enrolling them in one of the aforementioned forms of therapy.
How then, can children and teenagers struggling with hyperactivity disorders, be helped?
Alternative Treatments for ADHD – Risking Kidnap by CPS
There are about as many opinions on this subject as there are stars in the sky. A single search engine search for “alternative treatments for ADHD” will return results such as reducing the amount of sugar these children take in to their bodies, eliminating artificial food colorings, adding omega-3 fatty acids to a child’s diet, yoga or meditation, vitamin supplements, herbal supplements, and neurofeedback training.
With so many varied opinions floating around, it can be quite difficult to decide which approach works best.
However, please keep in mind that Child Protective Services frequently kidnaps children from biological parents who don’t medicate their children or enroll them in traditional therapies – even though the CDC has not found either method of “treatment” to be effective.
Biblical-based Non-drug Treatment Model that Works
After being a foster parent for several years, I was given the opportunity to direct a Biblical-based program that worked with teenage boys who struggled with hyperactivity, rebellion, defiance, poor academic performance, truancy, drug and alcohol experimentation, etc – a ministry that helped those boys without the aid of drugs.
As a matter of fact, one qualification we had for any young man to be enrolled in our program, is that he be completely weaned off of any mind-altering medications prior to his admission.
Hearing that, folks sometimes questioned, “Have you ever had to ask a parent to remove a child from your program because he could not function without medications for ADD, ADHD, or ODD?” They seemed shocked when we told them the answer was no. They had been brainwashed into believing their children had to be on pills.
Sometimes those parents would argue, “But when my child misses even one or two doses of his medication, his behaviors spiral out of control. He needs the medicine.”
That’s right. Any drug addict going through withdrawal goes off the hook.
Let’s face reality here. Place a child on mind-altering drugs for six months and he becomes a drug addict. When he misses the dosages his body has become addicted to, his fragile little body will panic.
In the four years I was involved in this drug-free program, we saw teenagers rebuild relationships with their families, improve their academic performance, learn to control their anger outbursts, and overcome addictions. Several asked the Lord Jesus Christ into their hearts, and a few even announced that God has called them to preach while in our care.
How Can Troubled Teenage Boys Turn Their Lives Around without Drugs?
How did we work with troubled boys without the aid of drugs? That is a wonderful question, although some of you might not like the answers.
First and foremost, consistency was key.
When a boy was first enrolled, we sat him down and explained all of our rules and the consequences he would receive if he failed to follow those rules. (It is important to note that in order for consequences to be effective, they must outweigh whatever amount of pleasure the youth may be receiving by breaking the rule(s) that are in place.)
Depending on if the boy seemed like he was genuinely trying to adhere to the rules or not, we often gave him a two to three day grace period to get accustomed to the new rules and living environment before enforcing them. However, once that grace period was over, it was essential for each child to know that every time he crossed a certain line, a certain consequence would be received.
If children and teenagers feel like they are only disciplined when Mom or Dad is having a rough day or if they feel there is a good chance they can get away with misbehavior even half of the time, they frequently test their limits. When youth know those in authority over them mean what they say, it’s an entirely different ball game.
Secondly, the influences we allowed in the teens’ lives had to be limited.
What we allow to enter our minds often dictates who we become. That’s why we have the saying, “You are who your friends are.”
If young minds are filled with lyrics about cheating on their girlfriends, drinking, partying, doing drugs, and getting in fights, those thoughts will become rooted in their hearts. If young people’s eyes are filled with watching violence, sexual lewdness, and profanity on television, movies, and video games, how can we expect those same young people to grow up to become model citizens?
If children and teens are permitted to hang out with thugs, gang members, alcoholics, etc, we can’t expect them to refrain from those activities. If children and teenagers are allowed free reign of the internet… LOOK OUT! Temptations of looking at pornography (which can lead to acting out sexually), researching illegal activities, meeting adult strangers, and getting involved in criminal activity are lurking throughout the World Wide Web.
When kids entered our program, they were not allowed to be on Facebook, they could not bring their cell phones, they weren’t allowed to listen to filthy music, and they weren’t permitted to watch programs containing immorality.
Thirdly, we realized if we just simply took things away from them, the kids would go insane! We had to replace those negative facets of their lives with better ones.
We required the boys to join a choir, where they sang at churches of like faith throughout our state. We taught them to raise their own vegetables and to work with animals. We took them hiking in the woods and even on camping trips.
We taught them to play fair by getting them involved in playing basketball, football, and volleyball – this also enabled them to burn off their energy naturally. We helped them build their self-esteem by sharing their testimonies with others, by teaching devotions to other students, and by rewarding them for improving their behaviors and/or academic performance.
Fourth, we taught our boys the Word of God.
Like it or not, God is our Creator. He knows how many hairs are on the heads of each person He has created. God knows us better than we know ourselves. If we could get those boys to fall in love with Jesus Christ, their whole outlook on life would change.
Fifth, we invested a lot of time in our students.
Young people need adults to be very active in their lives. They need parents, aunts, uncles, and friends who take an interest in what they’re doing – in noticing both the good and the bad things they do.
There is nothing like seeing a boy lose his temper and punch a hole in the wall and then complimenting him for not taking his anger out on another human being. That may sound silly, but it works. When young people are complimented for doing well, they try to do even better. Frequently, a child like that would not punch holes in the wall a second time; the next time he would hit a punching bag instead.
We did not follow an ADHD specific diet, we did not pump their bodies full of drugs, and most certainly we did not have them attend play therapy or meet with counselors. The majority of our students had already been through traditional types of treatment methods and their behaviors had only gotten worse.
Drugs and counseling are not the answer – no matter who asks the question.
Comment on this article on MedicalKidnap.com [3]
See Also:
Foster Care Children are Worse Off than Children in Troubled Homes [4]
Feds Pay for Drug Fraud: 92 Percent of Foster Care Kids Prescribed Antipsychotics for Unaccepted Uses [5]
About the Author
This article was contributed by Nehemiah Flynt, author of Legal Discrimination. Flynt has several years of experience providing foster care, working with children who were medicated for hyperactivity disorders, and of working with the same types of children and teenagers without the aid of medication. His book will enlighten readers as they learn how our government consistently removes children from their biological homes, forces them to become drug addicts, throws them in and out of foster homes for no reason at all, and then wonders why they grow up to drop out of school, not form healthy relationships, and not have the ability of holding down jobs. Please visit www.legaldiscrimination.com [6] for more information.