Psychotic Reaction: Kids And Antipsychotics
33 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // August 1st, 2007 // 8:30 am
The scrutiny given the widespread use of antipsychotics in children continues. Earlier this year, a report about industry influence on doctor prescribing habits in Minnesota illustrated the trend. Now, an investigation by The St. Petersburg Times indicates the issue is, indeed, not confined to any one locale, but in fact reflects what some say is a national trend.
In any event, the paper reports that, iIn the past seven years, the number of Florida children prescribed these drugs has increased some 250 percent. Last year, more than 18,000 state kids on Medicaid were given prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs. Even children as young as 3 years old.
Last year, 1,100 Medicaid children under 6 years old were prescribed antipsychotics, a practice so risky that state regulators say it should be used only in extreme cases. These numbers are just for children on fee-for-service Medicaid, generally the poor and disabled. Thousands more kids on private insurance are also on antipsychotics.
“”There are no studies that have shown they (atypicals) are safe, or for that matter, that they are effective for children…The bottom line is that the use of psychiatric medications far exceeds the evidence of safety and effectiveness,” says Ronald Brown, who last year headed an American Psychological Association committee that looked into the issue. “What people need to do is what’s in the best interest of children instead of what’s in the best interest of people’s pocketbooks. But children don’t vote.”
Mark Olfson of Columbia University studied the use of antipsychotics in children and concluded that only a small percentage had psychotic disorders. Most were used to treat mood disorders, depression, anxiety and ADHD - by families and docs who have tried everything else and are ready to step outside the well-established treatments and take more risks.
“Most child psychiatrists would probably tell you it does work,” Olfson tells the paper. “But there is a real need for research, clinical experiments, to determine whether in fact it does work. Given the number of young people, it is a matter of urgency.”
This isn’t cut and dry, however. The report includes numerous anecdotes from frustrated and concerned parents that are well worth reading. Take a look.
David McGuire
Sacrificing kids for profit.
That’s all it is.
Jim Moore
Screw the research, that just gives more money to the drug pushers. People did not need all these mind bending drugs 100 years ago. Kids learned how to read without amphetamines and people got over depression with healthy food and time. I bet the real reason antipsychotics are being prescribed to anything that moves is that the amphetamines and antidepressants have finally gotten the bad name they deserve and the drug pushing psychiatrists have nothing left to use but the antipsychotics. They will prescribe them for anything which leaves me to wonder WTF they really know about any of it, the supposed disease or the supposed treatment. I say they know nothing about it and if they were to treat people with their MD training they would handle most of it anyways. Common sense would be to look for an infection or nutrient deficiency not chemically lobotomise a child. That’s not a solution that’s criminal. No one is saying the children don’t need help and the parents are not at wits end but don’t stand up there and act like you have any science to back up this money making and harmful drugging of our future generations. We need a review of all this supposed psychiatric literature and jail any liars. False advertising is illegal in this country.
Doug Fairchild
I have been around since before most of these mental illnesses, psychoses, neuroses, etc. had been invented. Yes, invented. The mental difficulties for which these drugs are the solution were invented and made mysterious in order to give mental health practitioners something to treat, and pharmaceutical companies something for which to sell their drugs.
Sure, kids often have problems. Yes, they misbehave. They can be a genuine trial to parents and teachers. But they do not improve by being drugged. Drugs and so-called “medications”, do not make them more able. Do not cure them. All the drugs do is to suppress symptoms.
The word “cure” is not part of the psychiatric vocabulary, because they know they can’t cure anything.
Laura
ADD, ADHD, etc., etc., etc. are invented ailments, voted on by a show of hands at the annual psychiatric conventions. These are then published into the “Diagnostic & Statistical Manual”, a.k.a. psych “bible”. Further fraud, further legal drug pushing, further betrayal, further murder.
A dictionary definition of “diagnostic” (medical): a device or substance used for the analysis or detection of diseases or other medical conditions.
There are no devices or substances that are used for the analysis or detection of diseases or other medical conditions as regards the thousands of factually invented diseases from the psych “bible”. Just other’s invented ideas, formed from free-associative thinking.
There are statistics, mostly that psychiatrists permanently main, damage, rape, murder and ultimately betray people who wanted help and came to them for help. It is the wrong method to treat people and statistically, does not help them. Try to locate one case in psychiatry’s history where the person was helped or cured. You won’t find one. Think about that! Not 1 in the 150 years they’ve been around.
Eliminate the psychiatrist and their barbaric “treatments” and get people REAL HELP with vitamins, exercise, removing all stress from their lives mainly through educating them on how to do these things.
Doug Fairchild
Oh, and one more thing. Drugs not only do not improve health and intelligence. They suppress it. People do not become more capable, more intelligent, more perceptive and mentally acute by being drugged.
Chris King
Could it really be that society is waking up?
Or maybe it’s just that this pharmaceutical activity is just now being exposed, and that’s all it takes - people being informed - and then they can make the correct decisions.
Ken Thomas RN
The problem begins when parents have no one else to turn to. If they have better alternatives to drugs, a good majority of them would do so. Insurance companies and Medicaid systems do not support any other alternatives except psychiatry. We, as a society, need to make known the other alternatives, the safer methods, and educate politicians, parents, school systems and the media what other ways there are to helping kids without the drugs. It’s on us.
Laura
Yes, EDUCATE NOT MEDICATE! Whatever happened to the “Say NO! to drugs campaign”?????
BOB FIDDAMAN
If they (pharma) ain’t killing our children with drugs they are controlling them!
No need to tell them (pharma) that they should hang their heads in shame because they don’t know the meaning of the word.
Drug reps are nothing more than the Devil’s (pharma) workers.
Money talks folks… even at the expense of our future on this planet.
Sub human scum!
Fid
http://fiddaman.blogspot.com
Seroxat Sufferers Blog
Monica
I believe if the funding of our Legislators would stop, we would see millions of children free from Drugs. I believe it is driven by the “All Mighty Dollar”. I also believe it is driven by the lack of parenting skills. If parents would take the time to “parent” their children, they would find that these kids are normal, healthy, and happy children. Has anyone thought about the effects of the media, TV, video games, and LACK of movement? Have we thought of what we are EATING? The junk and chemicals we are feeding the children? Common Sense tells me that if the kids used their imaginations, and ENERGY, we would have less medicated children. This entire system makes me crazy! Give our kids a chance at normalcy, and clear thoughts! Its time to step up to the plate and expose the fallacies to America!!!
Rod Jenkins
Some relevant facts:
• Depression, nervousness, agitation, irritability, and inability to focus, etc. are routinely caused by pathogens, hormone imbalances, physical disease processes, street drugs, medications, exposure to environmental toxins (including indoor air pollution, cosmetics, etc.), chemicals (pesticides, growth hormones, other additives) in our food supply, food allergies, nutritional deficiencies, and/or other non-optimum (but reversible) physical conditions.
• Treating ‘mental’ symptoms with psychoactive drugs masks the underlying physical problem which, untreated, continues unabated and allows continued bodily deterioration and disease.
• Treating ‘mental’ symptoms with psychoactive drugs in children causes a strong worsening of those same symptoms for a significant number.
• Long term use of psychoactive drugs brings about increasingly serious and undesirable mental and physical side effects.
• The only clear winners in the use of such drugs is the pharmaceutical industry.
IT’S YOUR LIFE & YOUR CHILD’S FUTURE AT STAKE. YOU DECIDE.
Oscar Wegner
Kudos to the SP Times for finally waiking up to a criminal issue and setting a chain reaction nationawide. how about addressing the drugging of senior citizens, especially those who live in homes for the elderly? My solution to this problem would be, why don’t we stuff the psychiatrists with these drugs, since 99 percent of them are truly insane anyway. With these drugs suicidal side effects and the already high suicidal tendencies of that profession, I bet we get rid of more than 50% of them. Kids and seniors will be safer after that.
Oscar Wegner
Kudos to the SP Times for finally waking up to a criminal issue and setting a news chain reaction nationawide. How about addressing next the drugging of senior citizens, especially those who live in homes for the elderly? My solution to this problem would be, why don’t we stuff the psychiatrists with these drugs, since 99 percent of them are truly insane anyway. With these drugs suicidal side effects and the already high suicidal tendencies of that profession, I bet we get rid of more than 50% of them. Kids and seniors will be safer after that.
Ernest
Since I moved from Florida to Michigan, I have noticed the same trend to put as many kids as possible on expensive and profitable antipsychtics through Medicaid. State Medicaid programs are a very easy target for drug companies once they get their drug listed on the approved schedule of drugs. Eli Lilly is the front runner in aggressively running up Medicaid prescriptions to its very expensive antipsychotic, Zyprexa. I wonder how much safe medical treatment is being denied through Medicaid in order to fund this huge number of kids being experimentally given antipsychotics.
A lady I know just became a drug sales representative. She used to sell nuts and bolts to factories but really did not know much about them. Cutbacks in orders at many of the factories she sold to forced her to seek a higher paying job. I know she knows even less about drugs than she did about nuts and bolts, however she is an attractive and persuasive salesperson. It is disheartening to think that every day she is out there convincing doctors to prescribe to children and adults the drugs she is selling. If doctors only knew her last job was selling nuts and bolts and that up to that point she had no medical or pharmaceutical training whatsoever. And that doctor is going to hand out to his patients the free samples she gives him.
Rabbit
What’s the current status of TMAP in Florida?
Tina V
I’d like to share some personal thoughts of my own with you about being a mom.
I don’t rant much, but I feel compelled to communicate this to my circle of mom-friends first, and ask that my circle communicate their viewpoints to their circle of mom-friends (and so-on).
I’m very thankful for the moms who follow their gut-instinct as regards raising their children, instead of going with what the psychiatrists or media says is the way to raise their kids. We need MORE like you! ~;o)
I’ve always said that once we get a Mom-President and if she actually takes the reigns:
1. Moms’ll raise their children at home and get paid well as they are raising our future society (Denmark and other countries do actually pay their moms WELL to raise their children - 2K per month! ~:o)
2. Our children will not be without a faith and/or prayer in school - kick the drugs and psychs out and get faith back in!
3. We won’t live in a society of children on “anti-depressants”, who, as our recent 15-year history has shown, ’snap’ and harm.
But Moms, we have the right and the duty not support those who glorify criminals in dress, manner and song. By dressing our pre-teens and teens like what we see on TV, we’re doing just that … have you seen what’s on our current TV? It’s really over the top!
But guess what, there WILL NOT be a change unless we START … and it DOES start individually!
An example: A few years ago, in LA, I was approached by my kids’ school counselor who told me my son was exhibiting signs of HDD. I got a bit upset with her and told her that I know that alot of this stuff is made up. I told her that I also knew that pediatricians are given bonuses by the drug manufacturers, based on the amount of drug prescriptions they give kids! At this time, she acknowledged that 90% of those put on Ritalin and other such drugs are “misdiagnosed”! After a bit more conversing, she left ‘with her tail a bit between her legs’ - never heard a word about my son again … Just because a kid is unruly or causing trouble is NO good reason to put them on drugs! Ethics handlings? Yes but not drugs that make them more managable! Not one of my kids have ever taken psych-drugs, I’m very proud to say!
Do you remember what they say the 30’s 40’s and 50’s were like? I mean our morals and what we valued were extremely different … we’ve given raising our children to Government and Doctors who are focused on $ and having ‘managable’ people … but hey, no matter how bad they are, it’s our fault - they aren’t responsible for doing what’s in our better interest - we are!
Sometimes I’m sure it can seem like ‘nothing can be done about it’ and that’s why we’ve got to put more than 60 million of our children on psych-drugs again this year … yes, we need to do this to handle this year’s 300 ‘discovered’ (more like “made up”) conditions, right? Did you know that each of us (based on the list of ’symptoms’) are ADHD and HDD? What IS true is that SOMETHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT!
Encourage your friends to be a mom to their children, not put them on drugs cause doc says to … docs seem to be only working with #’s these days, not children.
Do your part to create a sane, alert and clear-thinking future and help as many as you can to get off the psych-drugs!
With lots’a love, Tina
Jocelyne Boerma
Finally, people are demanding that we look into the devastating effects of drugging the populace, let alone our children.
This has got to end !!
Jenny
Antipsychotics to treat depression…these drugs are incredibly sedating to most! This is ridiculous…
These drugs need to be banned outright. They should not be administered to children, the elderly, the developmentally disabled or anyone with two XX chromosomes, or an X and a Y…
Psychiatry is just a sick manifestation of this society’s need to control.
Shelley Abate
Very well done to the St Pete Times for bringing this very newsworthy issue into public view. It is time we adults do something about the senseless drugging of our children for invented “mental illnesses”. The pharmaceutical giants are making a fortune at the expense of the well being of our children. After all, the children are the future.
Randy Hock
I definitely agree that parents should have Choice, and that choice should be an educated choice so they are not “Bullied” or
given FALSE information-that leads to incorrect treatment.
After all “whats at stake”? —-Just a kids life?
A veteran speaking out for kids—–”when children become unimportant to a society, that society has forfeited its future” –
LRH
nobody
instead of manufacturing illnesses that you are selling the miracle cures for, why doesn’t somebody come up with a plan that might allow mothers to stay home and mother, then maybe all these emotional disorders from being raised by a myriad of child care providers because mommy is always working way too hard to not even make ends meet might go away
Rabbit
Knowing the influence that NAMI has on Florida law, I would say one of the things Florida needs is a force equal and opposite to BigPharma, and that’s never been NAMI.
Need advocacy and more in Florida that is organized by and for psychiatric labellees to meet the needs of psychiatric labellees. I’m sorry that children are dying and suffering irreversible harm from the drugs that adults force on them, but it’s also up to the adults to stop this madness.
shelby
psychopharmacology maims and mutilates body mind and spirit, but why is this being ignored concealed and misrepresented?, also quite disturbing, is the arrogance of indoctrinated therapists counselors nurses and doctors absolute refusal to acknowledge adverse drug reactions, and the dire circumstances wrought about by these medications, which is going to be affecting all future generations now, we are just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg of this cascading failure
Alison Doran
Thirty years ago I was committed to and institution and prescribed antipsychotics. I took them for 6 weeks, but as soon as I got released I quit taking them because of what they did to me. I couldn’t read or write or even follow a simple TV show. I was so uncoordinated I couldn’t dribble a basketball. When I quit taking them withdrawal symptoms set in. I felt like I was jumping out of my skin. It was so horrid I felt as though I was cast into the deepest hell. It was months before that feeling went away. For the next few years I was unable to hold down a job. Eventually I recuperated, but it was not without great effort. Even now, 30 years later, I catch myself twitching my lips and tongue in ways that I know are very unseemly and unnatural. It is hard to control. These drugs cause permanent nerve and brain damage. AND NOW THEY’RE GIVING THIS STUFF TO KIDS!!!!???? I think these drugs and all other psychiatric drugs should be banned, and anyone caught making or selling them should be imprisoned for life. They are much worse than crack or heroin.
Uli Sommer
I am a former pharmacist from Germany. I sold my pharmacy in the 80s, because I SAW observing my customers day by day that the majority of drugs don´t work and much worse they are very harmful.
I am now in the US and I am very shocked about the massive, false and misleading advertising for drugs which has lead to a tremendous use of harmful prescription drug. Worst of all the drugging of children. Highly addictive drugs for adults, that had been taken off the market and put under the severest category of addictive drugs in the 60s are now given to children (Ritalin), an outrageous crime!
James
Do the Scientologists, dietary supplement proponents and other fringe people Google stories on psychophamacology and post en masse? Pharmalot never has this many anti-pharma comments.
Wonder how many folks here also hate evil vaccines–they cause Autism, yanno. Just another plot by the evil drug companies.
Chris King
Do the drug companies monitor stories on antipsychotics on children so they can attempt to make less of the criticism?
Seems like they’d be busy these days with papers across the country reporting on the criminal controversy.
Lisa Van Syckel
James,
One Question….
When is it appropiate to give an antipsychotic to an infant?
Im not a Scientologist..but than again you already know that..
pete
When did people caring about health generally (including questioning if heavy duty drugs were good for children) become ‘fringe people’?
Does it mean that the majority (ie NOT ‘fringe people’) of Americans don’t care what happens? That would explain how America as only one fifth of the worlds population manage somehow to consume over half of all available medication and an even greater percentage of all available psychological drugs.
Maybe all that medication consumption for one relatively small part of earths population wouldn’t be necessary if things tipped backthe right way round - and it became the ‘fringe people’ that thought consuming any old rubbish wouldn’t have an effect on body and mind, and that a pill for every ill was ‘normal’.
pete
For James’ benefit - I’m not a scientologist either.
Giving antipsychotics to infants is obscene. It’s the ‘invisible’ equivalent of physically beating an infant around the head until it damages the brain. That is child abuse. If damaging a child’s brain is considered an ‘OK’ thing to do by the ‘majority’ and caring about it is considered to belong to a ‘fringe’ element, then there’s something very very wrong in America.
Tina V
It’s disgusting that we would actually have to petition against something as observably hideous as Teen Screening! A psychiatrists, a pediatrition who perscribes Ritalin, the parent who puts their kid on the drugs nor the drug pushers on the street’s shame will ever be mine - YAAAAY! I’m glad SOME GROUP is there exposing what the drugging does and that it stop - aren’t you, James!
Nan
James,
I could play the same game and accuse you of being a drug rep. But I won’t go there.
As an FYI, I have nothing to do with scientology. Because of having dealt with unbearable side effects as the result of being on ADs, obviously, it sickens me greatly that antipsychotics are being given to infants. Seeing what they have done to a good friend, I can only imagine what they are doing to the brains of young kids.
The reason you are seeing so many antidrug posts is that people are waking up to the fact that these drugs are being used to control children.
Rabbit
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