Actress Kelly Preston plans to lead a protest with hundreds of supports from the Church of Scientology against the American Psychiatric Association's annual convention in San Francisco Monday (May 19).
Preston, who will next be seen in "The Cat in the Hat" with Mike Myers, has two children with husband John Travolta and says she's protesting the psychiatric organization's recent opposition to federal legislation designed to keep parents from being coerced by school officials to give potentially addictive psychiatric drugs to children.
Other celebrities such as Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley , Juliette Lewis, Isaac Hayes, Anne Archer, Catherine Bell and Lynsey Bartilson have spoken out at rallies and testified before the House of Representatives Government Reform Committee on this issue since last September.
The actors are involved with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights -- a mental health watchdog founded by the Church of Scientology -- and the commission estimates that sales from stimulants and antidepressants prescribed to children in 2002, were more than $1 billion.
The group says that since the beginning of 2003, 16 states have introduced laws that would prohibit the practice of psychiatrists using teachers to identify children as mentally disordered and forcing parents to give drugs to their children as a condition for them continuing school.
Preston is expected to be joined at the protest by parents Larry Smith and Vicky Dunkle, who say that after being pressured by school personnel to put their children on psychiatric drugs for behavioral problems, had children die as a direct result of the drugs.