The Medicalization of Childhood?

[christiangirl]

My 25 cents (it started off as 2 cents but I couldn't shut up).

Originally Posted by DrPhil

So, I watched 20/20 and thought of the Conrad Murray thread. 20/20 was talking about foster children being given multiple drugs. Some of these kids are being prescribed drugs by the age of 4. 4! 4!

This little girl who was adopted was given 5 psychopathic(?) drugs for a number of mental disorders. They showed a tape of her "going crazy" and running around the house screaming. These drugs were messing with her head. How can some medical professionals say that CHILDREN have these disorders and need medication? Do they really need to change the brain chemistry of children? Is there no consideration of the side effects?

1. LOL How'd you get from this to Murray? Just the overprescription piece?
2. The term is psychotropic drugs and they are WAY overprescribed IMO. I'm glad to work with psychiatrists who are very hesitant to prescribe anything to children, despite the push from insurance companies. That is a big part of it--those who are actually in need of psychiatric hospitalization often are not covered by insurance if the doctor does not prescribe anything so I often see prescriptions for very low doses of things (like doses so low they fall out of the range of what's even effective) just so they can show insurance they are on something.
3. @ the bolded: It's a tough call but there are definitely those who are in need. I have had severely depressed teens on my case load whose conditions did not improve with diet/lifestyle changes. The very scariest thing I have seen in my career so far was a psychotic 3-year-old. He was not prescribed anything because of his age but I would not have been against it because his condition was that bad. I had never seen anything like it and haven't since so I know it's not "the norm" at all but I no longer believe that kind of thing can't exist.

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

Part of that comes with the "popularization" of certain disorders, too (if that makes any sense.) Ex: autism is very much in the "spotlight", these days, ergo more people tend to self-diagnose their kids with it based on like one or 2 isolated behaviors.

iAgree. Both bipolar and ADHD (among other things) are WAY overdiagnosed for numerous reasons, including because those are the ones the general public "knows" so once people learn of it, they think they see the signs everywhere. What are often results of inappropriate diet, lack of structure, normal hormone surges now merit medication and I think that can mess a kid up. Not just their brain chemistry but what message are we sending by telling someone their anger outbursts are abnormal but this pill will fix it? Being socially awkward =/= autism. Having bursts of energy followed by sleeping like a log =/= mania followed by a depressive episode. It's hard because there are children who really do need actual psychiatric help and parents ignore or disregard the signs and tell them to suck it up. Then you have the ones who are being pumped full of every drug on the planet and there's nothing wrong with them at all.