If you’re not following the Bipolar Burble blog on Facebook, you likely missed it but we had quite a conversation last night about an image that’s going around Facebook. The image says, “STOP PSYCHIATRIC DRUGGING OF KIDS.” The image is of an innocent, sweet-faced child holding up a sign with the words. The image is attributed to a user on Facebook whose political views are listed as “anarchism.”
Righty-then.
Regardless as to who made this image, the image itself has been circulating in, you guessed it, antipsychiatry circles. (I won’t bother drawing lines between antipsychiatry and anarchism, but, you know, I probably could.)
Not surprisingly, one reader with a mentally ill child took offence to this image and all the passing around of it.
This image suggests that:
- Giving psychiatric medication to children constitutes “drugging”
- Parents shouldn’t be giving their children medication
- Children shouldn’t be taking medication
- Parents who give their children medication are doing something wrong
In other words, it stigmatizes both parents of, and mentally ill children themselves.
In other words it spreads negativity, hate and prejudice.
The Psychiatric Drugging of Children
If you’ve read my piece on psychiatric disorders and medication in children you’ll note that I’m very against drugging children. Quite frankly, when I think about a child being put on the kind of medication I’ve had to take, I feel a little nauseated.
However you’ll also note that I say that sometimes it is the right thing to do. And when I wrote the piece I was far less educated on the matter, but now, actually knowing someone who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a child, I can say that I was right about that.
Sometimes psychiatric medications are required in children and not giving a child medication would be cruel. Just like withholding any other medical treatment can be cruel.
Stop Stigmatizing Kids Who Need Psychiatric Medication
I rather took offence as well. That’s why I made this image:
This image has been removed because, indeed, someone else owned it and was more than a little unhappy that I modified it and posted it.
now, perhaps, those who are passing around the “STOP PSYCHIATRIC DRUGGING OF KIDS” think they are, somehow, helping. But they are not. They are simply further stigmatizing a group of people who have suffered enough thank you – mentally ill children and their parents. They are stigmatizing kids with a medical issue – just like any other.
Are kids overmedicated? Maybe. That’s not really my area. What I can say is that when a child needs medication they need compassion, support and understanding and not further hatred and stigma. I guarantee these mentally ill children and their parents feel bad enough without us piling on about how “drugging” them is “wrong.”
So today, during Mental Illness Awareness Week, I ask you to share this article or the image. Show your support for kids with a mental illness. Show your support for the parents that have to make the impossible choice to medicate. Show that mental illness awareness includes children too. Show that stigmatizing anyone for taking medication is wrong.
Because these kids and their parents are part of our community and they deserve a little backup.
Psychiatry is not science in any respect.(this is provable but it takes a bit long to go into it). Therefore, the remainder of medicine declares anyone who improves–or says they do– on an unscientific regime as having experienced a quote “placebo effect”. Real science takes into account the placebo effect, which apparently is so powerful at times folks can be convinced they improve even while taking destructive and toxic drugs, which, in the long run, in fact provably shorten life. Psychiatry justifies this fact by replying “we saved life in the first place”.
None of the descriptions or definitions of so called mental illness have ever been proven, either. Schizophrenia, Bipolar, Major Depressive Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Paranoia, Neurosis and Psychosis, delusions, etc. have never faced any rigorous scientific testing by scientific experimentation designed to to so, applying variables in reaching conclusions, etc.. Nor has the precepts of Psychiatry undergone any sort of scientific rigor upon which as a valid medical discipline Psychiatry can hang its hat.
That people suffer psychic distress, stress and distress, and “issues in living” is of course anything item altogether, which is of course true. That humanity–which, supposedly in “civilized lands”(some of which are becoming more totalitarian, repressive, and oppressive, paralleling the rise in influence of coercive Psychiatry), opts for coercive Psychiatric oppression to govern through laws of the state(which Psychiatry regularly and institutionally thwarts, along with Constitutional rights, and human and civil rights) is on the ascendency–right under the nose of the American People–in a context of an indifferent holder and defender of the First Amendment(ie, the mass media), a shameful confluence of large economic interests(ie, hospital corporations,large pharmaceutical companies, and the “ancillary” professions the mental illness system employs. Psychiatry therefore provably regularly breaks each and every law applied to it in the United States of America and patients never–not just rarely or unusually—never have the ability to prove such human rights are violated in a system in which judges and the courts have been corrupted by the so called “expert witnesses” of Psychiatrists and others in the mental illness system.
Let us be clear this is the situation. And secondly, let us be clear that Psychiatry has zero–repeat zero–ethical, moral, or legal responsibility to oppress and repress the pppulace in such a way. It just does, always has, and is happy to continue in its powerful position in the most per capita incarcerated society of the United States of America on the entire globe of industrialized societies today. Those are indisupted facts and ought cause more concern than Psychiatry and the mental illness system wish that they do.
Now I am not calling the parents on here who testified to their daughter getting “better” on Psychotropics evil or people who are ill-intended. Not at all. Bill Cosby long ago correctly defined parenthood however as a type of insanity, which was an apt description. Thus, the perception of being “better” usually talks about more desirable behavior, and in this context it can be seen as that. There is nothing wrong with that perception, but when we get into the insanely powerful interests involved in the mental illness system which simply do not want any improvement in this system because it means that some powerful interests would have to suffer in some way and powerful interests always oppose such change.
Now, neither do I condemn the sincerity of this blog owner in her comments;;I do however respectfully and strongly disagree with same, particularly when it comes to the struggle of human rights that is so vital to literally millions of people throughout the globe who feel–certainly with plenty of justification–that their rights as human beings have been trampled upon by the mental illness system. And one of the biggest tragedies of our time is that the United States of America insists it alone has the moral authority to insist upon human rights improvements in other nations whilst the human rights abuses in its own prison and quasi-prison system of Psychiatric incarceration system are serious and continue to get worse as time goes by.
There is a very simple fact also apart from the biologic and genetic model–which has insufficient science behind it and always will–of these theories of “mental illness” as defined and defined by the profession of Psychiatry. It must be understood that without such models, the theoretical underpinning of the profession of Psychiatry would evaporate, so this is self-preserving by the profession in a milleu that has historically and is sufficiently extantly had a built in preservation in the consciousness of society, politics, law, and preferred fears of the general public as regularly massaged by the mass media, and regularly inaccurately so.
It was in fact a Psychiatrist who became an American but was born a Hungarian, Thomas Szasz, who reminded us regularly, those of us who dared read his works and dared accepted his Libertarian viewpoint in so doing–of the primary function of Psychiatry(ie, Social Control) and the fundamentally inapplicable analogies of the concepts and terms used by Psychiatry in order to frame itself in medical terms yet inappropriately so(according to him). As a dissenter in a field where dissent is shunned(which is certainly true of all of medicine), Szasz suffered for his outspokenness, but never wavered from the truths he told about the primary basis and nature of Psychiatry–which poses a danger to the whole of society whether one agrees that Psychiatry does good or one disagrees with that.
There is a simple fact also, which I will remind the blog owner as well as readers, which is that Psychiatry is only interested in perpetuating itself, and in involuntary commitment processes regularly uses the procedures of staff falsification of records(sometimes in ways which in theory would trip criminal laws but in practice do not since most prosecutors have no societal interest in prosecuting such cases, but these are regular occurrences in coercive Psychiatry);the unethical practice of forcing medication and “treatment” of various types upon patients(which no other branch of medicine, or should I say legitimate branches of medicine do), and the lie that Psychiatry is a necessary force to combat future behavior in people based upon Psychiatric diagnosis that may threaten themselves or others. A combination of fear, money, power, influence, and in my judgment too many people finding such a situation acceptable is behind continuation of this charade. And I call it a charade for my own reasons, which began with an involuntary contact with that profession long ago in a school setting the process of which I had no say in, and my parents were wrong in this then, with my detached alcoholic father knowing it wasn’t right yet not asserting himself and my domineering mother siding with a Nun who initiated such a process, which somehow perhaps may be in some sense more politically correct to complain about after what we know today on a widespread basis about the level of concern for children those in power positions had in the Roman Catholic church. I am just taking an educated guess on that. I since learned that I did indeed have a recognized medical condition that could explain my difficulties in my life, over which I was ignorant of until age 45. Thus, while it is quite true that ignorance is certainly not bliss on any true medical matter–I would also assert and affirm that Psychiatry is no good substitute for overcoming such ignorance and addressing the situation in a manner of mainstream medicine apart from the unscientific and thus wildly invalid practice of Psychiatry. I say so knowing many on this board can and will disagree. I am not at all threatened by anyone’s disagreement with me on this board but I remain concerned as I have been my entire life about the lack of belief of Psychiatry in the First Amendment, which censorship and repression has sad to say, been observed on many other blogs in which dissident views simply disappear(as many of the people who hold them–in their cases sometimes behind the locked doors of hospital units).
The worst stigma you can attach to a child is the idea that she’s nothing but a defective little robot of protoplasm whose only hope of leading a meaningful life is to take poisonous, soul crushing, obesity and diabetes inducing, brain damaging drugs till the day she dies, ’cause thats what ends up happening to them when they first get jacked up on SSRI antidepressants and/or ADHD stimulants till they have a psychotic episode, (which ANY perfectly normal human being will have if they take anough of that garbage,) then telling her the drugs simply “unmasked” an underlying bipolar disorder that she’ll need atypical antipsychotic drugs for. It’s a huge evil scam that’s destroying a whole generation. This PHONY anti-stigma article is despicable drug industry propaganda and whoever believes it is worst than a fool. And don’t accuse me of being a scientologist. If that daffy cult didn’t exist, the liars running the pharmaceutical/mental health racket would be forced to invent it to distract the American public from their crimes against humanity.
Thanks for this! We are just starting the process to see if my 16 year old daughter needs medication….. it’s so tough to know what’s the right thing to do!!!
Hello Natasha,
I also have a blog where I write about mental illness in children and teens, including the issue of stigma, which not only harms our children and teenagers, but the entire family. I’m writing to share with you and your readers a perspective on one of the sources of stigma that isn’t as often mentioned as it should–mental health professionals and teachers.
This is what happened this morning. Our public broadcasting station here in Portland, OR, had a call-in show on the subject of mental illness and violence in teenagers. It was a praiseworthy attempt to bring mental illness back into the national dialogue, which has been hijacked by the longstanding debate on gun control. It was an effort to answer the public’s angst-ridden question “Why?”.
A researcher on violence and teens was on the panel, and he was asked to comment. Like so many other professionals I’ve worked with, personally, with my daughter, he blamed the parents for not properly keeping track of their children, and not properly disciplining them. This attitude is unacceptable, especially from a psychologist involved in research on the subject.
I’m reaching out here to call upon parents to collectively lobby the mental health professional associations and medical schools, and insist on a commitment to include family-centered treatment in curricula and clinical practice.
Thank you for letting me comment,
Margaret
http://www.raisingtroubledkids.com
The two-year investigation in Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Texas found that foster children were prescribed psychotropic drugs at rates 2.7 to 4.5 times higher than other children in Medicaid in 2008. Here : http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/12/01/143017520/foster-kids-even-infants-more-likely-to-be-given-psychotropic-drugs
Psychotropic Drugs on Foster Children ABC 20/20 2 Dec 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxkCjeyeCXk
This needs to stop.
Hello Informed,
Obviously, I am _not_ pro medicating children where it is not appropriate. I should say, however, that kids in foster care may simply be prescribed more medication as they are in foster care for a reason. The study doesn’t mean anything without an adjoining study that talks about their diagnosis rate.
It’s quite reasonable for me to think that more kids with a mental illness would end up in foster care than on average. But we don’t know that without a study, of course.
– Natasha Tracy
I worked in foster care. Often the reason is their parents. Mommy is a prostitute, daddy is unknown. Mommy ran away, daddy is in prison. Daddy is unknown, mommy killed herself. Mommy is in prison. Or plain old child abuse.
Is really the answer here to give these kids pills? It’s gonna just screw them more. It in fact does. Often they are put on meds so they are easier to work with. There’s one psychologist for 20 kids… and they work part time and are not really competent. People who work there are underpaid, spend lots of time with administrative crap and often aren’t really educated as how to work with kids like that.
Natasha,
There are opinions and there are facts. Opinions can’t change facts, but facts can change opinions. By the time my son was seven he had lived with Asperger’s for all of those seven years. He had anxiety and phobia-type fear that was triggered by his hyper-aware senses.He had been in counseling then but his counselor was not experienced at treating Asperger’s. I wanted him to get some relief (and me too) so off we went to the psychiatrist to consider medication. I was armed with nowledge of psych drugs which several people in my family took as their daily vitamin. Myself included. It took 6 years to find the medication to treat my severe anxiety and panic attacks that resulted in agoraphobia. Also I wored in the mental health field often on a team with psychiatrist’s treating the severely mentally ill. We had regular seminar’s at which the latest information about these drugs. None of these influences made me for or against these drugs. Just more informed curious about how truthful this doctor would be and if he could help my son. After about ten minutes of what I know should be at least an hour because it was an intake, he had decided that an anti-psychotic would be the best way to go. Knew that drug well, but as what many of my adult schizophrenic clients took. I won’t list the side effects and long-term effects. For my seven year old?! For anxiety?! I was offended by his offhand remark that he gave this to a lot of the kids. What the fuck?! I tried to keep breathing while I listed all of the reason’s this was not going to happen. I also asked if he bothered to inform the parent’s of what effects this could have on those developing little brains. I thought this was a good example why people jump on the anti-psychiatry bandwagon. Security didn’t have to come but I did want to smack that man. Still, this did not change my opinion to remain open-minded.
When my boy was 15 and devloped serious mental illness, and was in agony, scared he was going to hurt himself or me, that was the point when medication was our friend. We also had a very good, ethical doctor. I knew he actually cared about my son and saw the concern on his face the time my son came to an appt. drastically worse then he had been. We exchanged looks of fear and concern. He is a mystery still with 5 diagnoses and needs often needs encouragement and always support. I don’t know what the future will bring for this boy with a genius IQ and a sick brain.
No offense, but I think a psychiatrist messed up your whole family with drugs.
I didn’t see the original image that prompted this article. My main concern would be patient safety since much of prescribing for kids is off-label, simply because it’s harder to run clinical trials on kids and there isn’t as much data about potential long term harm. There was a good book on the subject named “We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication” by Judith Warner. I guess if I had to have a picture it would be a plea for doctors to be upfront about the risks involved to make it easier for the parents to make this decision.
“But since every Johny is send it for evaluation and amphetamines when he don’t like maths that much…. many people rightfully see something wrong with the system.”
VenusH here we are agreeing again. My experience working with kids in schools reflects to me that every time there is the slightest issue the child ends up being to blame somehow. |If he or she is not fitting in to the sausage factory which is the modern education system, first the system will try to blame the parents, and then it will try to explain the situation by giving the child some kind of behavioural diagnosis (a gourmet sausage, if you like the metaphor). That’s why my caseloads as a speech therapist were so large. Much easier to refer the child on than for the school or system to look at their practices as a whole. To be fair, some school communities were willing to do this to some extent. Others had more extensive issues – a set in culture which couldn’t be changed. Many parents had the sense to move their kids.
I guess why I’ve been saying there’s a conflict of interest when treating kids’ behaviour, or any other population that is relatively powerless. It is much easier to try to change the child, than his or her environment, because with a child you can manipulate all variables. Is is wrong? I think so. Do the well meaning people around the child understand this? Not all of them. Many people, when dealing with children, the disabled, the elderly, are not aware of the constant ethical conundrum which exists in the administration of their care, between themselves, the need for them to keep their jobs, and keep their sanity, and keep to budget.
But regarding real childhood mental illness, which I believe probably does exist – well if my child had bipolar disorder, I would make damn sure first, but would have no hesitation in ‘drugging’ her, if that was what was required to ensure a semi-normal childhood.
I would get many opinions first. I know that, if I were a mother with bipolar disorder, I would have many worries about my child having bipolar as well. This, I believe would distort my objective opinion. I’m anxious like that.
The ‘poison’ I consume on a daily basis has allowed me a normal life for the past two years. Family support and other measures have also helped. Nothing would have worked alone. I had therapies and all that before I consented to medication, and they didn’t work, not until the medication worked first, then I was able to apply what I’d learned. With my child I’ll have learned from that experience, knowing that the same may be true for her, or it may not be. I can understand why people would advocate for trying other things first, but you have to keep in mind that it may not be the best solution.
It’s not simple, not at all. There are problems at systemic level, at environmental level, at family level, and with the child. There are problems with the science and the archaic methods that we have. It’s great to debate this stuff online – but when it comes to solving real world cases, cooperation is needed which means putting egos aside (we all have egos) and our resources towards what is best for the child and other stakeholders.
The problem with the current situation is that I believe the system is cluttered those that weren’t ill prior entering it… they may become ill on the wrong medication, or being reinforced in it… (how many grief-strucken kids are send to shrink and end up long term patients… just because their teachers in school lack understanding? How many kids who are simply not that bright end up with diagnosis of ADHD which later develops into something worse, because of long term exposure to amphetamines?).
I am not even talking about evil doctors. But they are just part of the system and there is so many clients… that there isn’t time and resources to truly devote to those who really need it. Maybe some of the real mentally ill kids could be on much less meds and much more functioning, only if they were given more comprehensive care. But it’s spread thin by unruly pre-schoolers who are send in as ADHD and whatnot.
ANd as much as I am glad to read parents here did their research, many simply do not. Not enough money. Not enough time working two jobs. They may themselves come from not ideal background, so they have issues themselves. It maybe good people but they just believe authority too much so if doctor says so, doctor is right (I know several such people who have Uni diplomas, so it’s not even issue of IQ).
I don’t really know the solution, but let’s admit, what we have now kinda sucks.
I completely agree on not stigmatizing kids, at least regarding MEDICATION.
As psychiatric drugs is not medication but plain HARD-DRUGS, I cannot agree with your view on drugging children with stimulants, anti-depressants and neuroleptics…
How do these so called medications work? What’s the pharmacology? There is no explanation that still stands ground based on nowadays knowledge.
As a pharmacist, do allow me to explain to you how these hard-drugs work: ….
From a chemical perspective, there are four major groups that, as drugs or as psychotics, destroy the neurons in the nervous system.
The substances in these groups obviously don’t know for themselves whether they’re being used as illegal drugs or as lifesaving medication.
Their use mainly depends on their perception by society and on the kind of money to be earned – proceeds from crime, or proceeds from medicine.
These groups (indoles, cannabinoids, piperidyl benzilate esters, phenylalkylamines) are psychotics because they destroy neurons dose by dose.
Indoles: LSD, melatonin, circadians.
Cannabinoids: known.
Piperidyl benzilate esters: cocaine, methylphenidate (Rilatene/Ritalin, Concerta), trazadone, varenicline (Champix).
Phenylalkylamines: part of which: Phenylmethylamine → Ketalar.
Phenylmethylamines → dexamphetamine, Desoxyn, Wellbutrin, Zyban, Pervitin, methamphetamine, Aderall.
Phenylpropylamines → Prozac, Strattera and most other SSRIs.
Phenylbutylamine → Silomat (meanwhile banned).
The destruction is due to the fact that these toxic materials possess the same basic energy model as the neurotransmitters that provide the energy required by the electric stimulant transfer system.
After all, the receptors in the cell walls are less selective than the vesicles in the cells themselves, which keep the natural energetic components apart from the physiological fluid in the cells.
This is why strange energy patterns, once in the cell, cannot find a way back into a protective vesicle, meaning that the magnetic field from the energetic component breaks up the physiology of the cell and thereby destroys the cell.
http://www.adhdfraude.net/pic/AxonenENG.jpg
The stimuli conductivity of the nervous system changes, as does behavior and conditioned thought.
This results in a loss of control over behavior (psychotic behavior), suicide, warped perception of reality (anti-depressive, but also new depression during rebound), tics, hallucinations, aural hallucinations (hearing voices), delusions, and aggression.The psychotic behavior that results from this loss of control is medically corrected using known antipsychotics (neuroleptics).
Because the nervous system recognizes this as a danger, it reacts with a danger reflex (fight or flight, or the doping kick), and by producing antibodies in an attempt to neutralize its attackers.
The antibody model can be immunochemically tested using a saliva test, for example.
The danger reflex makes the arteries constrict.
This is why chronic use and the chronic constriction of the arteries causes:
1) (the heart) pulmonary hypertension develops, generally leading to sudden death (not resulting from hereditary heart disease). (Cardiologist congress, Venice 2003)
2) (the brain) the inner brain cells manage the memory via extremely fine capillaries, These constrict and cut off the oxygen to the cells, creating the mysterious amyloid plaque that is now known to cause Alzheimer’s.
(Also on my book: Requiem for presumed diseases, ISBN 978-908152132-1 , Amazon)
The problem here is… many kids are indeed drugged. Foster care is the most prominent example. And yes, they are DRUGGED. They are not ill, mostly traumatized and… drugged.
You say it’s hard to imagine mentally ill kid. Well, I guess for you it’s hard to imagine somebody would give their kids powerful mind altering drugs because pill is easier than other solutions… but well, it happens.
If this all didn’t happen, this “stigmatizing” picture (I don’t think it is. I think labeling kids with few problems as “you brain is ill” sick is much much much more stigmatizing).
Are there mentally ill kids? Sure? Are the parents too quick to reach for a pill? Oh yes. For my love of trash TV I watched few episodes of toddlers and tiaras… and one mother had her child diagnosed as ADHD and refered to the pills as “be-good” pills. Did the wonderful doctors suggest her that maybe dragging her child across the country, while dressing her up in horrid clothes like a dress up doll, might be as well cause of her daughters behaviour? It was not said there, but worry she just went from one doc to another? Exception? Sure. Just as children who really need meds are exception? Or that family in docu on medicated children, who’s dog was on anti-anxieties (because he barked or something… he looked positivelly stoned). Or “when on meds, my daughter is my best friend”.
It’s not evil anti-psychiatrist wanting to destroy wondrous psychiatry. There is real problem, that’s why we have anti-psychiatrists (just like anarchists are not there for lulz, but are pretty much symptom of the fact we made a mess of this world).
If only those kids who truly need it were on meds, it would not be an issue, because they’d be few in many. But since every Johny is send it for evaluation and amphetamines when he don’t like maths that much…. many people rightfully see something wrong with the system.
If i didn!t have a neo-buddhist mom, I’d be on heavy meds by age ten too. Reason? What horrifying mental illness did I show symptoms of? My father died of cancer, after being sick for months and I was rightfully depressed. Shrink recommended meds and designer clothes as a way of fitting among classmates.
there’s interesting article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/health/attention-disorder-or-not-children-prescribed-pills-to-help-in-school.html?hpw&_r=0
If this is not drugging, then I don!t know what is.
So maybe the original image has some validity, doesn’t it? Maybe anti-psychiatrists are right in some aspects.
Hi VenusH,
Oh yes, this one doctor is doing something unethical as are the parents of those children, I’d say. It doesn’t mean it’s an endemic issue.
– Natasha Tracy
Don’t you think people like these also stigmatized those who truly have issues?
Hi VenusH,
Do they contribute to stigma? Yes, absolutely. These are the kind of doctors I would like to get alone in a room for a severe talking to. They tarnish the entire profession.
– Natasha Tracy
Stop giving children sedating, soul-destroying neuroleptic medications over their expressly stated objections, regardless of whether they’re legally old enough to consent.
As a person who was on medication as a child for 8 years, against my will and over my objections, I fully support and endorse this message.
Then again, my political views say “Anarchy (In an ideal world, human beings would not require government. Of course, our world is far from ideal…)” so I’m probably not rational enough to comment. Righty then.
Saying “don’t medicate children” is not stigmatizing. Any parent who medicates a child over the child’s wishes hasn’t made an impossible decision, they’ve committed an assault.
Stop stigmatizing *victims* on child abuse that was aided by psychiatric means.
The original image wasn’t stigmatizing. It was outrage, and my outrage doesn’t need stigma from you.
The idea of mental illness is very distressing. That’s why there’s so much denial, so much stigma and euphemism around the topic. The very idea that a child has a mental illness is even more distressing. We don’t want any child to be going through that kind of hell. We want to protect them. Fact is though, some kids are mentally ill. The only way out of hell for some of them is medication. That shouldn’t detract from our responsibility to provide stable social support for kids at risk and their families.
I wonder, should child medication go through an ethics committee of some sort?
Hi Sarah,
While I can understand why you might think that, I don’t think that’s reasonable or particularly logical. If there were an ethics committee on medication, it would have to be for all medication as a doctor can prescribe anything they want to any age group. Moreover, most drugs are not actually tested on children at all simply because the funding isn’t there. FDA approval is typically given in the adult population and doctors then use the drugs in the child population out of necessity.
And FYI, many _studies_ do go through ethics committees, if not the drugs themselves.
– Natasha Tracy
I don’t think it would be needed for all medications. What I was thinking was in regards to medications which are prescribed to manage behavioural symtpoms (I know you hate that phrase.. but I’m writing so I’ll use what I like :) ) As for which populations, it would not need to be for all populations but for populations where the ability to give consent is compromised.
The reason behind the ethics committee for each case is not to determine the efficacy of the drug in question, but to take away the inherent conflict of interest in each case. i.e. is this really the best possible management for this child? Also a mandatory management plan incorporating all aspects of care including behaviour management strategies, communication strategies, environmental support, other professional support, training for caregivers etc.
This would not be with the aim of making things difficult for the parents but as a support aid to their decision making, while keeping the best interests of the child in mind.
Of course, I’m dreaming – resources would never be allocated, budgets are stretched as it is.
are there children who definately, and without any doubt, need medication for behavior and mood issues? Oh yes.. yes yes yes… will not argue with you there. I have a very young cousin, the age of my daughter, who has been on a plethora of “bipolar” meds since she was 6 years of age. Do I think that perhaps she needn’t been on ALL those meds? Why yes. Do I think that perhaps she needed/needs to be on some? Why yes.
That said… there are many more children who are medicated on very highly powerful and sedating drugs that really needn’t be OR not as “over dosaged”.
Many of my daughter’s friends (she is a Junior in high school) are on one or the other psych med, if not a multitude of psych meds, and have been since they were in kindergarten. Guess what? They are not that much better than they were in kindergarten. Are they worse? All but 1, no. The one? eh…
BTW… many of the “psych meds” are used for other illnesses found in children – i.e, seizures/epilepsy. Unfortunately, they get the negative stigma just as badly – if not moreso – than the kids taking the meds for psych reasons…. as badly as the adults do, as well.
i have a 14 year old niece, who at age 1 was found to have a near grapefruit sized tumor on her brain. She underwent many surgeries, nearly died twice, and the family was called in once for she was given only weeks left. That was nearly 8 years ago.
She has survived but with much much complication, but survived she has and has done so remarkably well given all the powerful chemo and radiation she endured for nearly 3 years. This has left her with a disabling developmental delay but she is in the 8th grade, albeit a school set for those with developmental disabilities.
Prior to her parents finding this school, she was mainstreamed into regular public school and for a while she did well. Yet, when she hit the 5th grade.. her hormones kicked in.. and well, behaviorally and mood wise.. she did not do so well.
As a result, the public school system (for which her mother was an educator within the very same system) demanded that she be medicated with something or they’d either have her parents reported OR expel my niece. So, my sister and brother-in-law took her to see a psychiatrist… a child psychiatrist… who decided she had ADHD and gave her 3 trials of stimulants.
My sister said that her daughter ran through the house bumping into walls, tearing things off the walls, would be up all night with screaming nightmares, and would literally have hallucinations. Still, the psychiatrist insisted she be medicated with the stimulants – she was ADHD.
After several hundreds of dollars and 3 trials of stimulants later.. my niece’s oncologist referred her to a psychiatrist and psychotherapist that specialized with children who had cancer and the treatments they received while battling such (chemo, radiation, etc..) and upon the first few visits with those 2… niece was diagnosed with Anxiety/OCD and given a anti-depressant and a benzodiazepine. They have been doing well (all 3) since and having been enrolled in the school setting for children with developmental disabilities, she is currently thriving.
Really… some children are truly mentally ill and do require the heavy meds.. no doubt. Many more… are not and don’t. Some, are due to other reasons that have not a thing to do with mental/psychiatric… some are even due to medical issues that if resolved wouldn’t be so dysfunctioning.
Much easier to drug a kid… than to figure out what is happening and IF the kid truly needs the HEAVY drugs.
Hi Natasha,
I rarely write, but I have been an avid reader of your blog fo a couple of years now.
This subject is very personal to me because I have a 13 yr old who went on medication at 11, much to her fathers and my distress.
Our daughter has Aspergers, GAD and OCD, and was truly extremely anxious from the second she was born. Suffering every single day with multiple phobias and a myriad of other symptoms which left her chronically sleep deprived, having panic attacks daily, and experiencing several episodes where she
couldn’t eat solid food for months at a time without gagging, choking and vomiting. And this but an abridged version of the many issues she was facing.
We saw every specialist, read every book, had her in therapy and did many many more things to help her, nothing was off the table to try to give this girl some relief. But in the end when she was nine the Paediatrician and her psychologist agreed she needed medication as an adjunct to everything else we were doing to give her some peace and a better quality of life.
This was a very very hard decision for us and we waited another two years doing everything else because of our fears of medicating our child. During this time we researched everything we could on this subject and when we hit a point where our daughter started losing a lot of weight we knew we had to act.
Since being on the medication she has improved out of sight, and we can see it was the right decision.
I have mentioned all this because people are highly judgmental of parents who have kids on medication.
Somehow they think we all just go O.K. that’s an easy option, when really we tried everything else first and still use medication as one part of a multi-facited approach. We hate that our daughter has to be medicated, but now she can function and have peace, and live having some quality of life.
So to all the haters out there, I’d say, please walk a mile in my and my daughters shoes before you jump to judgement so quickly.
Hi Kerri,
Thanks for sharing your story. You’re not alone out there. Many people share a similar tale.
I tell people to walk in others’ shoes all the time, because like with your story, things are far more complicated than just drugs vs. no drugs.
– Natasha Tracy
Excellent follow-up to yesterday’s discussion. I was happy to see the new photo. It makes me wonder if the first one was manipulated as well.
Hi Littlemissmagic99,
I just assumed the photo was doctored. Who’s going to go to all the bother of taking that photo when there’s Photoshop? ;)
– Natasha Tracy