Category: Health and Wellness
Modern psychiatry in its attitude to children exemplifies the old Victorian mantra that ‘children should be seen and not heard’. Why bother listening to children and helping them to solve their problems when you can simply drug them into silence whilst making a nice profit on the transaction?
Kids prescribed toxic drug cocktail
EXCLUSIVE by Kate Sikora
From:
The Daily Telegraph March 24, 2010 12:00AM
CHILDREN as young as one are being prescribed powerful anti-psychotic drugs that have been linked to deaths overseas.
The strong medication is designed to quell psychotic episodes normally experienced by adults with schizophrenia and bi-polar.
There are concerns some doctors are illegitimately writing scripts for pre-schoolers and primary school children for unapproved medical reasons, such as behavioural problems or ADHD.
Figures provided by the Therapeutic Goods Administration showed up to 3351 NSW children aged under 18 were prescribed the drugs in 2007-08.
Of them, at least 62 toddlers aged five and under – including five one-year-olds – were prescribed the drugs in NSW in that period.
“You can assume children under 12 are illegitimately being prescribed these drugs for behaviour problems. It should not be the case,” University of South Australia’s associate professor in psychiatry Dr Jon Jureidini said yesterday.
“These drugs are not marketed or recommended by the TGA for that use.”
Common medications such as Risperdal, Zyprexa and Abilify are not approved for children under five. The TGA has approved Risperdal to treat children with autism.
Side effects can be so severe in adults that elderly patients with dementia are warned they have a higher risk of sudden death.
In the United States, 45 children died while taking anti-psychotic drugs between 2000 and 2004….
This does not surprise me. It is the medical industry sucking money from one's pockets. but my question is, why are parents so stupid? why are they that illinformed and unread that they can't be weary of drugs given? It's as easy as doing their homework and finding out what really is going on here.
Pisses me off
Yeah, but sometimes doctors and all that suck them into it, telling them that their child needs this, and will be unable to function properly in schools, take part in social activities, make friends, and so on. It's absolutely disgusting, and I hope parents can think beyond that garbage.
You'd think that, but parents think doctors are gods. I hate doctors and I've said that right to their face.
Just out of curiosity, if you hate doctors, why were you at one to tell it to their face? And if your injured, do you go to the hispital?
I agree with those who are totally against this. Leave it to the alopathic doctors to do these things to children. It's all for the benefits of their pockets and to help the pharmaceudical industry. It's bad enough they've spread lies about smokers. Now they wanna hurt poor innocent children! But I also totally agree that these parents need to get their heads out of the sand. They seem to be losing the ability to control their children, to communicate with them, and more so, to trust their own intuition. But even so, putting a one-year-old on this shit has to tell them something? Have these adults gone brainless? If anything, take them to an ND (doctor of naturopathic medicine) and see what's really wrong with them and how to safely handle it.
The whole thing is sad. But LOL at post 5.
post 5 it was required in order to get into the hell of a nfb training center it was not of my choosing. and only if I was on my death bed would I even consider a hospital. But go head, keep on popping bills and patches to cure your headaches and pain.
In my opinion, the whole thing of medicating children goes down to laziness and misinformation. It's easy to pop a pill in their mouths than to figure out why the problems exists and how it can be solved. Since we must never say anything negative about anyone, the parent doesn't want to know that he or she is an idiot. So blaming the child's inattention, failure to find and remain with borders, and inability to follow instructions on his/her mental syndrome makes him feel better. A ppill enables dad or mom to continue playing on the internet, working in the yard, or drinking with his pals instead of doing his parental job.
We have a friend who is a stay at home dad. He sits in front of his pc everiy day. The child sits in front of the plug in drug. She will not obey, can not follow instructions, and does not sit still. At age four, she is not potty trained. The experts have assigned her as aspbergers. Although this might be true, a lot of her problems could be improved if someone gave a darn and spent time and took care.
i love history. here are some interesting facts. back in the 1800s there was a medicine called mothers helper which was given to obstreporous children. it was alcohol and opium mixed with something that made it go down easier. In the factory districts of britain, the alcoholism rate among the very young was appalling. moms and dads who had to work gave tots gin so they would sleep whilst they were away. I could tell you more.
If we are parents, that should be our first priority. We have jobs to makke money but our life should not be our work. Kids need to know that they are important. They need to have love time and care.
Grrrrrr. Only thing better in the morning then a good rant is great sex. enjoy your day.
Post 9 is truth.
That is so so sad about your friend's child. Personally, I'd call child services on him, which is not something I'd ever say lightly. Clearly, this child is being neglected if she can't even go to the bathroom correctly at age four. Some people should never be parents. I guess that's where the song Mother's Little Helper came from, though in that case, it was the mother taking the pills not the children. tht's downright scarey.
Hi,
I grew up with my adoptive mother, who was a foster parent, and most if not all of the foster kids she took care of were on all kinds of these medications such as risperadal, Adarol, depokote, Ritalin, Paxil, Zoloft, and others. Some were even on several of these at a time, and they were as young as 3! Many of them did have problems, but only because of extensive abuse they went through at their biological families' homes and/or previous foster homes they had been to. I think that, especially since they were children, other methods could have been used to help the children cope with what happened to them as well as teaching them proper behavior and following directions, etc. It just takes someone who is willing to help instead of just doing the bare minimum for the pay check and that is willing to work with them and be patient even if it is hard. The kids always had at least one or two therapy appointments each week, and each time they went the therapist would change the meds, either up them or change them to a new one, but they wouldn't really help the child much except to tell them that it was OK to act out and stuff like that. The foster parents never said anything about all of the meds, which are not meant for that age group, because it kept the kids doped up and out of the way so they wouldn't bug them, and so the kids wouldn't be hyper or whatever. I used to get really pissed off about that growing up, but since I was still a minor my opinion didn't count I guess. I was never on those kinds of drugs my self thankfully, but most of the other kids that came in and out of my mom's house were already on those drugs and had been on them for long periods of time. When they were on the meds they acted kind of like zombies, because they were spaced out from all of the medication they were taking, and their intelligence didn't seem as high as kids that were not medicated, because the meds took away their ability to function right and think in a clear manner.
I don't hate doctors, by any means, but seriously, why does a prescription have to be the solution to every problem?
Because Western medicine refuses to except that there are alternative reasons to illness and the people who practise it are only interested in curing the psymptoms not in dealing with the underlying problems that caused them in the first place.
You know what? I hate doctors as well. My whole childhood was spent beeing thrust about, from doctor to doctor and they compare you to those damn charts. They said I wasn't normal. Well, what is normal?
You should definitely theck out the "It's Not Too Late to Save Normal" thread under the health board here. It's really informative.
It's not just doctors who do the so-called "normal" thing. Teachers do this, and most therapists do this. It seems that society is falling into this trap of reading charts, and expecting every person to follow this as if we're some sort of machine.
Yes, and I'm just not down with that.
Now I'm wanting to get a quick exercise walk before I pick up my daughter from preschool, so I've only had time to skim these posts. I shall totally read a little later.
While I tend to think some children are entirely overmedicated, last year I saw a request for a lithium carbonate (HIGHLY TOXIC mood stabilizer) level on a 10 YEAR OLD. I commented on this request to my colleague Kristofer, and this young man has parents who work for state Department of Mental Retardation. He worked one summer with kids who had their share of the mental problem, and told me without their meds, he saw a marked difference in them. Some of the reason these kids were on meds had to do with their moms drinking alcoholically or abusing narcotics while pregnant, so while I'm in agreement with you guys on the inappropriateness of overprescribing meds to children, there is another side to this issue.
No doubt, meds can be helpful for children whose problems are so severe that nothing else will improve their functioning, at least not in a suitable amount of time. In cases where the child's potential actions could be dangerous, I think they should be on medications, at least until their condition either stabilizes, they grow out of it, or they find alternative methods of coping. And, some children will need to be on medication their whole lives of course if the problem is chronic. But what gets me is how parents think this medication is a cure-all and that somehow makes them less shitty parents. If your parenting skills suck, no matter how much medication your child is on, they'll know you're just trying to keep them out of your way or keep up your own image, and that will hurt even more in the end, causing additional problems.
Yes, meds are not always the answer.
Agrees with post 13 and the last one before mine.
Yes, I agree that sometimes there is just no choice, but like Margorp just said, it's not always the answer, and it's sad to think that some people think it is.