Sunday, September 5, 2010

Offering antipsychotics for kids isn't good

Young child hazards due to antipsychotics

At 18 months of age, Kyle Warren of Opelousas, La. was presented with antipsychotic drugs to help with temper tantrums he was having. The NY Times reports on his diagnosis when he was 3. He was identified as having autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia and even oppositional defiant disorder. His mom explains the medicine transformed him into “a drooling, sedated, overweight zombie”. Because of cases such as this, experts are looking more into whether toddlers should be receiving antipsychotics.

Antipsychotic prescriptions often double

According to a September 2009 study by the Food and drug administration, more than 500,000 children and adolescents are on antipsychotic drugs. The greatest amount comes from teenagers dealing with schizophrenia, since many believe that is the age when the disease comes out, although “tens of thousands” of preschoolers are getting drugs from pharmaceutical businesses.

From 2000 to 2007, kids that are privately insured and ages 2 to 5 have doubled the amount of antipsychotics getting used by then, reports the Times citing a Columbia University study. The survey showed that only 40 percent of children on the drugs got a correct mental health assessment. This is considered correct by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Antipsychotic medication stopped from being given to toddlers

There is a major concern that kids are getting antipsychotics too early in their lives. Dr. Mark Olfson thinks this is horrible. He is a professor of clinical psychology that works for a Lane University program that is designed to help families with little money that have mental health difficulties in their children.

“There are too many children getting on too many of these drugs too soon,” he told the Times.

In numerous cases, experts like Olfson say that doctors are much too willing to write prescriptions for heavy medications when the patients are young kids or even infants. It is hard to determine if children really have mental illnesses. There isn’t a science to it. This makes the FDA’s acceptance of certain AstraZeneca- and Bristol-Myers Squibb-branded antipsychotics for use on toddlers all the more disturbing, considering the wide range of disagreement within the clinical community as to whether brains at such an early stage of development should be exposed to such potent mind-altering products.

Thus, doctors can legally prescribe antipsychotics for toddlers for off-label use, despite a lack of safety research. Pharmaceutical companies are getting lots of profit off this.

No longer can it be said that

My peers and I care about this earth

It will be evident that

My generation is apathetic and lethargic

It is foolish to presume that

There is hope.

And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it.

-From “Lost Generation” by Jonathan Reed

Additional reading

NCBI

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20215922

NY Times

nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html?_r=1 and partner=rss and emc=rss and pagewanted=all

Bio Med Central

biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/9/80

Actupny

actupny.org/reports/durban-licensing.html

Generations lost

youtube.com/watch?v=MR4EWSbXLWA

Alternatives to toxic psychiatric drugs

youtube.com/watch?v=sBN2Zjz4W-



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