The Medicated Child and the Compliant Parent

"...Everywhere we looked it was, ‘Take meds, take meds, take meds.'"

Friday, 06 November 2009 01:23
pharmacyOn November 3rd, 2009 Frontline aired a program on the subject of a dramatic increase in the number of children being diagnosed with serious psychiatric disorders.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/view/
These overly prescribed and strong behavior modifying medications are now just beginning to be tested in children. In recent years, the number of children being diagnosed with bipolar, which is considered a mental illness, and ADHD is not only shocking, but very disturbing.

The program opens with a video clip of an activist protesting on behalf of children's rights and bringing light to this epidemic sweeping across the nation.

A lot of the credit for lighting a fire under the FDA goes to the much-maligned anti psychiatry movement and its most prominent spokesperson, Peter R. Breggin, MD. Dr. Breggin the author of many scientific articles and books which includes Toxic Psychiatry, and Medication Madness: A psychiatrist exposes the dangers of mood- altering medications (2008), for years along with a few others have been the lone voices in pointing out how drug companies have essentially bought and paid for the psychiatric establishment. This includes lead academic researchers who have been paid to lend credibility to questionable industry research. According to Dr Breggin, this research, most of which is done on adults, has been used to "justify coercing unsuspecting kids into submission".
"The rates of bipolar diagnoses in children have increased markedly in many communities over the last five to seven years," says Dr. Steven Hyman, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health. "I think the real question is, are those diagnoses right? And in truth, I don't think we yet know the answer."

The drugs can cause serious side effects, and virtually nothing is known about their long-term impact. "It's really to some extent an experiment, trying medications in these children of this age," child psychiatrist Dr. Patrick Bacon tells Frontline. "It's a gamble. And I tell parents there's no way to know what's going to work."

I was riveted to my seat watching in horror as a father made a desperate call to 911 stating "my daughter passed away in the night." A picture of a beautiful 4 year old girl staring back at me made me wonder, how could something like this even happen?

Jacob Solomon, a young boy of five, was initially believed to suffer from an attention deficit disorder. With over one million children diagnosed with either ADHD or bi-polar, his parents followed doctor's orders and reluctantly started him on Ritalin. Over the next five years, he would be prescribed one drug after another. "It all started to feel out of control," Jacob's father, Ron, told Frontline. "Nobody ever said we can work with this through therapy and things like that. Everywhere we looked it was, ‘Take meds, take meds, take meds.'"

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