"Ransom Notes" Creator Is A Public Speaker

Thanks to a very attentive reader, who passed along a tip: the man behind the "Ransom Notes" campaign, Harold Koplewicz, is in fact a speaker for hire for a group called Grabow Entertainment. I wrote about the campaign the other day. While I generally roll my eyes at public awareness campaigns and their wildly overplayed messages on mental illness, this one goes beyond the pale and is particularly wounding to families of autistic kids much less the patients themselves. There is a petition calling for this campaign to be nixed which you can find here if you wish to add your name. Over 700 people have already.

I am very tired after my graveyard shift at the shelter, so let me just ask a few questions: Does this guy not make enough money already from private practice, running New York University's Child Study Center, and doing studies for pharma companies? Why has the media quoted this guy for years as an authority on mental illness and its treatment when he's a co-author of the discredited Paxil Study 329? Why does he appear on shows like "Oprah" to lend credibility to whatever Oprah is pushing that day? What else is Koplewicz involved in? If I had more time and energy, I'd spend hours poking around. Maybe some readers would like to do it and pass along what they find. Maybe some journalists out there might want to do some of their own and talk to their sources. Methinks, there's a deeper story here. I did a teensy bit of my own poking.

I'm not sure what the doctor's comedy routine is like, but here's a precis of his lecture topics:

"In his speeches, Dr. Harold Koplewicz fuses his roles as a child and adolescent psychiatrist and parent to educate the public on how real child mental disorders are, how common and how treatable by informing his audience with facts they can rely on delivered with empathy, some humor and relatively easy to follow directions. Dr. Harold Koplewicz has also delivered many non science presentations to parent groups, YPO, mental health association groups, school nurse associations and teachers. His lecture themes include: * Understanding Your Child's Mood * Raising a Successful Child in and Affluent Environment * Everything You Wanted to Know About Your Teenagers and Were Afraid to Ask * Raising Successful Girls * Raising Healthy Boys * Helping Your Child to Understand God."

I wonder what his science presentations are like. And, I roll my eyes at the idea that the likes of this doctor are telling American parents about how to raise successful kids and helping them understand God. Wouldn't the widespread use of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics in children and teens--especially the long-term use of these drugs which don't have particularly good success rates--tell you a whole lot about the place of God in the Universe? Would you trust a psychiatrist like Koplewicz to lay it all out there for you? Have we replaced one relationship with God and the infinite with another? Is any of this "the kids aren't alright" paradigm really that beneficial to us as a culture, especially when the leading gurus and medico-priests make so much money from it?

I'm sorry but I've had far too many philosophy and religion classes not to ask those kinds of questions. I've also been a reporter too long not to know that I smell something very weird here, as well.

I somehow have a hunch we haven't heard the last of this "Ransom Notes" campaign and of Dr. K. (Credit for the Grabow Entertainment link goes to AHRP which sent it out by email to its list-serv earlier today.)