General Interest > Feed Your Head
Overmedicating children - when?
Oscar:
Our politicians want to stop doctors from issueing Prozac and other anti-depression medication for minors.
Will stop Prozac for children TV2 (Google translated)
They can still be medicated but now they have to be hospitalized for evaluation before they can get it. One 1/10 of the children compared to the percentage of children on medication in the United States are medicated in Denmark but still our politicians find it too much.
How do you see it? Are too many teenagers on medication? Are other options explored fully before the pills are selected?
Inculcated:
IMO, Children and teens are being overmedicated. It’s the easy and cheap solution and it’s costing the kids greatly. These drugs affect the developing brain in ways that are often permanent and many of them have lasting deleterious impact on the ability to self-regulate both mood and sleep...resulting in more meds. :dose:
There are some articles around here about kids in the foster care system being particularly vulnerable to being unnecessarily medicated.
I had linked this http://www.squidoo.com/drugging-foster-children and this http://www.patientsarepowerful.org/pati ... r-children once before on a thread discussing Michael Riley who was found guilty of 1st degree murder for the death of his four year old daughter Rebecca Riley
Oscar:
Some doctors who seemed to have lobbied the politicians into this new legislation think that 90 percent of the medication is wasted.
First of all it is hard to diagnoze any child before they are 10. The use of Forest Kindergarten eliminates the demand for medication for ADHD and many related illnesses.
For unkwown reasons we have no experiences in Forest School so our problem is the transition between kindergarten and school. I believe that we could explore this area way better before giving up and use pills.
KarenW:
I've always felt that kids were being over-medicated. In the 80's, it seemed a lot of kids were on Ritalin to keep them from being too hyper. Now it seems Adderall is the popular medicine to keep kids calm. Personally, I don't think all of these kids have ADD or ADHD. I think for the most part, they are kids being kids. Kids are supposed to be energetic and excited. I do realize that there are some kids that do need to be medicated and that the medication helps them concentrate in school but I definitely don't think this is the case for every child who is being medicated for ADD or ADHD.
wdtony:
Extremely small numbers of children benefit from being medicated with psychiatric drugs. In the general population, these drugs should be outlawed.
Mostly no children should be placed on these poisons. I would say, even most adults do not need them. The benefits are being disproven more and more as more independent studies are conducted. Just recently a study on US soldiers returning home from war taking anti-depressants showed absolutely no benefit when compared to those who took no drugs.
I remember back in 1990 when Depression and Bipolar was making its debut. I remember thinking, "This is great, it's not my fault, and all I have to do is accept this diagnosis and take some drugs". I was diagnosed bipolar after a few questions ( questions aimed at a specific answer) and placed on lithium, a very dangerous drug. The problem was that I was not Bipolar. I was duped and too young and naive to know better.
I think the idea of not blaming ourselves and not dealing with life's issues is such a desirable avenue that we are willing to "overlook" the possible dangers of the drugs themselves.
And now, "It's not my fault...it's not my kid's fault...the problem is a chemical imbalance in the brain.....so all is well, just give the kid drugs and no one has to be held accountable for anything. If the kid is still obstinate, we'll just double the dose".
Parenting becomes obsolete.
These are the dark ages of psychiatric medication and we will one day look back on this time and wonder why we were so socially ignorant. That is, unless we are all on drugs by then.
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