January 23, 2010

Kids on Antipsychotics


I can't tell you how disturbed I am by the increasing trend to put kids on antipsychotics, and ever increasing psychiatric medications. Isn't Ritalin bad enough? There is little to no research on the efficacy of this with children, yet their increase grows all the time. I wonder what the side effects will be on this generation of children raised on these medications.

Here is the story that sparked this small rant: Social worker says she warned family

I worked in Youth Mental Health, and while I know there were young kids that came in that were troubled, I don't remember seeing any that I thought powerful drugs were a necessity FOR THEM. Am I just blind to a growing reality? I'm not dismissing that possibility, but I find it hard to believe that a 4 year old needs Seroquel....
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is shocking, thanks for bringing it to my attention i have subsequently shared it with others, it reminds me of the story on Oprah about the seven year old girl diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Anonymous said...

That is a shocking story. It is hard to imagine...it's sad to imagine those children being drugged like that. It sounds like the issue is the parent being overwhelmed, although I would bet there is a financial pay-off for someone somewhere, as well.

Rachie317 said...

I've been meaning to comment on this post for two weeks! In my experience as a therapist for children under 7yrs old - I saw some BLATANT overmedicating of children as young as 2! It was really quite disturbing. Much more was about the parent's inability to provide an appropriate environment, stimulation, and structure than it was about the child have a mental illness. And the psychiatrists rarely wanted to take the therapist's opinions into consideration. Truly, it is one of the reasons I hesitate to go back into therapy.

Babs said...

My fav is when the parents are taking the kids meds. The insanity never stops!
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