We would like to protest in the strongest possible terms at the introduction of the *****programme. We believe you are introducing a program into the school which is the antithesis of the mission statement of this school, and our faith as Christian families.

 Following are our objections to this program:

1.   According to the Medical Journal of Australia, (19th March 2007) this program is part of an initiative by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in July 2006 to introduce school-based early intervention and prevention programs for anxiety and depression into schools. Nobody has mentioned this. Government initiatives are usually about resources and economics however much they like to grandstand about wanting to help people. This is about relieving the pressure on an already overburdened medical system and trying to make sure the population in general is mentally ‘healthier’ and assuming a public mandate to ‘fix’ school-children without consulting families on whether they actually want or need government intervention in the private lives of our children and subsequently our families.  It is another move towards the ‘nanny-state’.

2.   *** was authored and developed by one person.  Her organisation trains the teachers, it is her theories and philosophies that are being introduced here, they are CBT centred, not Christ-centred. We don’t remember asking Dr. **** to develop a curriculum for our children.  [Cognitive dissonance is used in schools across America to confuse and undermine traditional values and then conform young minds to an evolving pre-planned group consensus. See A New Way of Thinking]

3.   Cognitive Behavioural Therapy’s core tenet is that you can change your behaviour by changing your thinking. [The real issue is: what kind of "behavior" and "thinking" will fit the global agenda for tomorrow's world?]

CBT has been helpful in dealing with various psychological problems within a clinical context, but is being applied here in a broad-spectrum approach to a set of symptoms which are assumed to be a disorder [could mean anything that clashes with the new psychological strategies for of controlling human resources around the world] in themselves, without any consideration to pre-existing problems and conditions. 

This approach to mental health has resulted in the increase of easily available drug-based solutions which created problems of their own. In the fifties and sixties, depressed anxious housewives were given Valium to help them cope without looking at causes and individual backgrounds, in the eighties and nineties many school-children were prescribed Ritalin to deal with symptoms which were often mis-diagnosed as ADHD when there were often other issues much deeper than this at the core of the problem.

4.  Dr. **** is  a mental health professional with the required degrees and clinical experience but nobody else involved in this program is. Teachers are trained for one day with the organisation Dr. *** runs but are not themselves mental health professionals.  Again, this is a broad-spectrum ‘solution’ to an extremely complex problem which is different for every individual. Anxiety or depression are symptoms of many things, hormonal imbalance, dysfunctional families, or simply living in a very unstable world.  Parents are anxious because of terrorism, global warming, bushfires, earthquakes, threat of pandemics, financial crisis, worldwide recession and unemployment, and that was just the last few months. Generalised anxiety is normal in these situations.  The solution to this sort of anxiety is found in the safety of the family unit NOT in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Government programs to fix things.  If we wanted the government to educate our children we would have sent them to a government school. 

5.  It is assumed in the information sheet that parents will automatically support this program without proper choice or information. You have not told us you were going to introduce this program, you simply went ahead with it and then informed us after the fact assuming that we would simply support you in it without consultation.  Why would Christian parents who have elected and paid for Christ-centred education simply accept a non-Christian solution initiated by the government?  This is not just illogical it is insulting.

6.  The yellow information sheet gives contradictory information and confusing messages.  This in itself should be a concern.  Consider the following...

“It is a positive, fun learning experience that does not involve any clinical assessment or diagnosis and avoids labelling children as anxious or different”. 

A couple of sentences down we get

“(Anxiety Disorders) are often difficult to detect and if left unattended may develop over years into adult anxiety disorders, or in some cases, clinical depression leading to thoughts of suicide”. 

If nobody is being diagnosed then why the second sentence about leaving anxiety disorders unattended? We don’t like the word intervention in the description of this program since it implies intrusion into the lives of our children by an outside source, i.e. the government or private mental health organisation.  The determination of issues and their resolution with regard to mental and physical health should be a personal initiative and individuals should be given a choice as to how they address these issues.  We are not being given a choice. Further down…

“Why exactly worry and depression seems to be an increasingly common feature of our modern society is as yet not understood”

Why on earth would you want to trust to a program which admits it does not understand the problem it is trying to address? 

7. This program employs fear mongering and the principle of the false dilemma to encourage parents and their children to participate without actual evidence to back up their statements. 

 “15% of teenagers may experience some form of anxiety disorder…….These disorders are often difficult to detect and if left unattended may develop over years into adult anxiety disorders, or in some cases clinical depression leading to thoughts of suicide’ (Quote from yellow information sheet) (our emphasis)

Anxiety does not have to be dealt with by schools or by governments and we as believers are in the best position to teach our children scriptural principles to deal with traumatic or fearful life issues which have been based on thousands of years of Godly wisdom as opposed to a couple of decades worth of human understanding.