illness, or are we just eliminating annoying symptoms?

This feature-length documentary examines the alarming growth in the prescription of powerful psychotropic drugs for adolescents and children. This documentary covers the national tragedy of Columbine and focuses on the largely unknown fact that teenage shooter Eric Harris was on the psychotropic drug Luvox at the time he and Dylan Klebold took the lives of 13 other students at their high school. Violence and aggression, precipitated by prescribed drug use, is also explored in an unprecedented discussion between Mark Taylor, the first shooting victim in the Columbine tragedy, and Cory Baadsgard, a teenager on Paxil and Effexor who, in another violent incident, took his teacher and 23 students hostage at gunpoint in his Washington high school. The film proceeds to show the dangerous links between psychotropic drugs like Paxil, Luvox, Effexor and Prozac – commonly prescribed to adolescents for anxiety, depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – and the increased incidents of violence, suicide and psychotic behavior often observed in those children and adolescents who are taking the drugs.

The film also presents compelling personal accounts, including a mother going to prison and losing her son to government authorities because she refused to give her son psychiatric drugs.

We also ask some of the leading medical authorities and mental health professionals to tell us the unvarnished truth about current increased diagnoses of recently devised mental illnesses, and the unprecedented prescription of a host of very powerful psychoactive drugs to “treat” them. Finally, this documentary explores safer, alternative methods for treating childhood mental illness.

In the absence of any objective medical tests to determine who has ADD or ADHD, doctors rely in part on standardized assessments and the impressions of teachers and guardians, while other causes, or aggravating factors, such as diet, and environment, are often overlooked. Hence, diagnosing a child or adolescent with ADD or ADHD is often the outcome, although no organic basis for either disease has yet to be clinically proven. And yet, despite these dangers, many school systems actually work with government agencies to force parents to drug their children, threatening those who refuse with the prospect of having their children taken from the home unless they cooperate.

To some, this looks like institutionalized child abuse in the name of mental health, where naturally active and inquisitive children are drugged into submission while the pharmaceutical industry prospers.

New York Times bestselling author, Gary Null, Ph.D., an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and syndicated radio host, investigates this potentially tragic societal decay and suggestions on how best to combat it.

This is a compelling, beautifully edited documentary by a award-winning filmmaker, having both dramatic and important educational impact.