Ever hear of the "New Freedom Commission on Mental Health"? The public health community and a member of Congress are criticizing an administration plan for mandatory universal mental health screenings as a boon for the pharmaceutical industry. Here's a glimpse at Inter Press Service's coverage: The plan highlights the importance of "state-of-the art medications," though a scandal has erupted recently regarding the safety and effectiveness of the main types of drugs in question, particularly antidepressants. Deadly side effects of these drugs have already claimed numerous lives. In mid-September an advisory committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said antidepressants should come with "the nation's strongest warning" that they can cause suicidal behaviour in children and young people. Recently released studies by famed British scientist and psychiatrist Dr David Healy highlight that some of these drugs -- Seroxat and Prozac, both SSRI antidepressants -- appear linked to "homicidal" behaviour in adults. "In the last 50 years, the quality of the new drugs hasn't matched the hype," says Healy, author of 'Let Them Eat Prozac' and the person responsible for originally blowing the whistle on the link between antidepressants and suicide in children. Asked if he was saying: "the major breakthroughs, then, have been in terms of marketing instead of medicine," the drug scientist told IPS: "Yes, I think so. And that extends all the way to having their (the pharmaceutical industry's) policies put forward by departments of health in the U.S., the UK -- things like the Bush plan." Drug therapy based upon "evidence-based" practices is the backbone of the New Freedom programme's approach to treatment. But such practices have now been badly tarnished, with recent findings indicating the drug industry (called 'Big Pharma' by critics) has manipulated what were thought to be independent evaluations of new drugs, as reported in previous IPS stories.