This just blows my mind.

And that's in Oregon, one has to wonder what is going on elsewhere.

Joe(New York, Chicago, LA, Phillie,Dallas, Atlanta)Nation

Why, are you surprised she said bitterly?


I think you guys lead the world in multiply drugging little children.


With ADD drugs coming under fire, a recent explosion in the US of so called bipolar disorder diagnoses in even tiny children has again allowed for multiple drugging.


Oz appears in this and other matters to be between you guys and the UK.


And foster kids, of course, have usually experienced a lot of trauma and are distressed and hard to deal with. (Like I need to tell you!!!)



I understood that there WAS some very negative evidence about antidepressants and immature brains, and it has been enough to mean that in my country it is considered to be clearly contraindicated, except in very urgent situations, and with a great deal of supervision...at least by child psychiatrists.


This is kind of sad, because it was my experience that some of these multiply traumatised little kids did benefit a lot from a period of carefully supervised SSRI treatment.



In my experience (and I do not at all know if it is the same in the US) it is the paediatricians who are the ones more likely to be drugging kids, and with multiple drugs, and with totally inadequate bio/psycho/social assessment, and with little knowledge about alternatives.


By the same token, once we sell parents/carers on the notion that everything has a medical cause and solution, then it becomes difficult to resist the desperate people who demand a pill and where both carer and kid are suffering.

Yes, I'm sure this is not just an Oregon problem. It should scare the daylights out of all of us.

I'm a believer in better living through chemistry. It's worked for me.

I know Mo's story is a much smoother road than many kids who end up in foster care had and I know how insanely rocky that road has been. It's damn hard. Even now. Maybe especially now.

When I think of these little kids whose life has been totally upended going off to live with strangers and then drugged to help them behave it just breaks my heart.

I'd like to hunt down their parents and punch them in the nose.

I was out do errands and I started to wonder what will happen to these kids when they age out of foster care.

No home. No family. I forget what percentage of foster kids end up living on the street but I recall that the number is pretty high.

Now these kids have already been declared mentally ill and drugged into submission. Will they be able to find jobs? What about jobs with benefits that might provide them with the prescriptions they "require".

I wonder how many might end up in prison.

I wonder what that might cost.

I wonder what might happen if we invested that money into improving the foster care system instead.

Oh man. I'm ranting. I'm sorry. This just makes me sick.

I could tell you stories.

I think the operative words there were "in foster care". Not that that makes the story any better, but more believable than thinking it's 1 in 4 of all children.

There is no money to be made in foster kids. Psycho therapy is expensive. Life is cheap.

Drugs have replaced therapy.

Don't worry, we will soon all forget about them. Intill they become psychotic criminals then we can feel better about putting them in cages. We will also vote not to have it in our backyard.

Yeah but if the rest of America's numbers are similar to Oregon's we're talking about over 100,000 kids a year being given these drugs.

Over 100,000!

I read an article within the last week or so (can't find it!) in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, that claimed children as young as 2 were being diagnosed as bi-polar and drugged. It was an op-ed piece by a psychiatrist (I think) who suggested that many permissive parents would rather their children be labeled with a psychiatric disorder ("it's a chemical imbalance in the brain -- nobody's fault") than be taken to task for their own bad parenting. Easier to drug them than impose limits on their behaviour I guess.



Found it.

****.

Thanks for that article, Tai.

Amazing.

A 4,000% increase in diagnosing mental illness in children.

Either Darwin was wrong or we are completely fluked up.

I haven't discussed it much here but we have been going through some talk-therapy with Mo about some things and it has been hard on all of us. I know that kids have mental/emotional issues that need to be addressed. Nevertheless, I can't imagine thinking drugs were the answer in so many cases.

I just finished reading a book called "My Lobotomy". It is a memoir of a man who was given a lobotomy when he was twelve years old at his step mother's insistence.

This is like the new "lobotomy".

I've not checked my facts, but a reasonably reliable source told me that Oregon has the highest per capita welfare population in the US.

Could this just be showing up there first because of the economics.

I think people give kids drugs because it is much simpler than paying attention to them.

I have an understandably limited exposure, but have personally dealt with this (give em drugs instead of work with the child) more than a dozen times within my personal circle.

I believe it will only get worse.

I fear we have become people who want things fixed fast. I imagine talk-therapy isn't a quick fix but I suspect it may be longer lasting and will get to the root of any problems rather than just masking them. I hope it goes well for you all.