Can you spell "medication," Billy? A study of prescriptions to toddlers, etc.

E

Exterminate!!!

Registered Member
I have a friend, let's call him Klint, who was "diagnosed" with bipolar disorder and put on behavior-altering medication...

at age five.

These pills were a strict part of his life for about ten years, in which he did nothing more than violently defy authority and make trouble, all the while taking the pills and seeing no effect but hormonal imbalances which caused him to become overweight.

A few years ago his parents noticed that when doctors experimented with him not taking his prescription, his self esteem, mood, hormone levels, etc. dramatically improved. They concluded not that the pills didn't work, but that his treatment was over.

He still hasn't lost the weight, but now that he's off the pills, he no longer feels the need to act out and against those who medicated him. He still firmly believes that the prescription was the result of overworried parents attempting to label regular child-like behavior as mental instability. I've heard this from multiple family members.

Opinion time. Do you think that over-medicating our children for such things as ADD, ADHD, etc. really helps them? Do you question the very existence of such disorders? I acted out when I was younger equally, if not more, was never medicated, and am now a functioning member of society, if not a bit eccentric (roughly translates into I'M FUCKING INSANE, but back to the point.) I think parents are just scared because their children aren't as perfect as the Jones's next door and want to fix it. But do the Jones's really tell you all their kids do?
 
When you phrase it as "over-medicating," no. However, children's mental health frequently is ignored, although ADHD and ADD. It's very hard to be a child suffering with depression. I'd argue that your friend's kid was misdiagnosed; from what you described it doesn't sound like bipolar disorder, but Oppositional Defiance Disorder.

And I don't think you're insane. I think you're expressing a very mainstream view I hear constantly touted.
 
takandjive said:
When you phrase it as "over-medicating," no. However, children's mental health frequently is ignored, although ADHD and ADD. It's very hard to be a child suffering with depression. I'd argue that your friend's kid was misdiagnosed; from what you described it doesn't sound like bipolar disorder, but Oppositional Defiance Disorder.

And I don't think you're insane. I think you're expressing a very mainstream view I hear constantly touted.
Click to expand...

I'd really like to learn more about Klint's situation as a younger kid. Then we'd know if it was bipolar disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, or a kid getting mad because someone broke his favorite toy.
 
Agreed. The diagnostic criteria for children's mental illness, save for attention/hyperactivity disorders, tends to be pretty stringent. Shit, could even be something like Reactive Attachment Disorder. (I think children's mental illness is fascinting. Go fig.)
 
Good point, and I agree on the whole, but the way Klint's family talked about their pediatrician, it sounded more and more like the guy got caught up in trying to diagnose either the worst case or the most interesting to him. Kind of a diagnostic hypochondria, eh?
 
Interesting. I admittedly have a bias against medicating children, because my extended family of Uncle/aunt/cousin relations has a group of ten kids, and there's supposedly something wrong with every single one of them. It kind of pisses me off that the family's possibly wasting large sums of money medicating kids that might have been misdiagnosed because of ADHD, etc. media hype.
 
Agreed. However, a lot of childhood issus aren't treated because "they'll outgrow it." It's a double-edged sword, dear. :(
 
Ah ha! Good observation. So how do we find the middle ground, where children's actual disorders are treated correctly, but we aren't misdiagnosing and peddling pills to every child with parents who just want Billy to be their robot?
 
I think a lot of it requires more intelligent people becoming active child advocates. Primarily, I think it begins with teachers being more aware of child psychology and medicine. Parents are hopelessly irresponsible and social services are swamped.
 
Well how could they not be with all the things going on that social services have to deal with. You're very right. It makes me wonder what kind of hell a child has to go through to actually get an advocate in current times.
 
Teachers are really the first line of defense, and spend more time with the kid anyway. Think about it: The parents see them for a brief spurt (less than an hour) in the morning, and maybe for three hours at night. How the hell would they know if the kid's messed up?
 
Ah... true. But then again overcrowding in classes forces teachers to handle twenty or thirty students at a time. Out of those kids, there's probably three or four with some sort of disorder (this is an uneducated guess, my apologies,) and ONE who has a very up-front disorder. Example: Billy Sharon and Stan are in class with depression, but the teacher only notices Stan because he's the one who won't stop crying, screaming, detaching, etc.
 
I'd argue that their homeroom teacher, during parent/teacher conferences, should take 2 minutes of his/her time to talk to all the parents about watching for mental health issues in their child.
 
Most parents I know don't go to parent teacher conferences, for children of any age.

Plus i'd think that telling parents things like that would scare a lot of parents into more misdiagnosing.

No Child Left Behind indeed.
 
Which ones? Parents? Teachers? Children?

I vote all three. How bout just everyone on earth til we get down to attractive people aged 18-40 who are willing to do what it takes to subsist and really fix mankind's problems?

WE'D ALL BE DEAD
 
Exterminate!!!

one of the criteria for bipolar is a family history because its genetic
 
i doubt it, because there is always people who were adopted, there relitives refused to admit they had a problem or there father isnt who mummy says it is:p

However if one child has it there is a strong possablity that others would to so dont jump to conclusions that the fact they had to get treatment for more than one child means that its a miss diognosis
 
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