Study links childhood IQ to likelihood of future drug use

@ossobuco,

I'm not trying to be nosy, but I'm curious (so don't feel obligated to answer) -- how did her life turn out. Was she happy?

1 Reply

@BillRM,

so what? Maybe you're normal. Not everyone is.

Recent research shows that early abuse and neglect changes the fundamental architecture of a person's brain. There are problems with processing certain hormones and neurotransmitters. Their brains are different.

I get so tried of the bullshit of "Well I'm okay so everyone should be okay blahblahblah."

How narrow is your world? Seriously? Can you not look past your self?

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@boomerang,

Don't even justify yourself to people like BillRM or hawkeye or OmsigDavid.
There are hardly any threads left that aren't saturated by these three people who systematically wreck every thread and make a normal exchange impossible.

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@CalamityJane,

Ha!

I like David and I think hawkeye is very often thought provoking but I don't get BillRM with his "me, me, me". Unlike the other two, Bill never challenges me to think about something in a different way.

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@boomerang,

I found this to be an interesting article about what's needed in a neuropsych evaluation, particularly one that's going to be used for educational purposes.
http://www.aane.org/asperger_resources/articles/education/guidelines_for_neuropsychological_evaluations.html

Listening to Aditi Shankardass in the video you posted, I thought about this article I had read in the NY Times just a few days ago

Quote:

November 20, 2011
Drugs Used for Psychotics Go to Youths in Foster Care
By BENEDICT CAREY

Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid, a new study suggests.

The report, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to investigate how often youngsters in foster care are given two antipsychotic drugs at once, the authors said. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa — among other so-called major tranquilizers — which were developed for schizophrenia but are now used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms.

“The kids in foster care may come from bad homes, but they do not have the sort of complex medical issues that those in the disabled population do,” said Susan dosReis, an associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the lead author.

The implication, Dr. dosReis and other experts said: Doctors are treating foster children’s behavioral problems with the same powerful drugs given to people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. “We simply don’t have evidence to support this kind of use, especially in young children,” Dr. dosReis said.

In recent years, doctors and policy makers have grown concerned about high rates of overall psychiatric drug use in the foster care system, the government-financed program that provides temporary living arrangements for 400,000 to 500,000 children and adolescents. Previous studies have found that children in foster care receive psychiatric medications at about twice the rate among children outside the system.

The new study focused on one of the most powerful classes of drugs, antipsychotics. It found that about 2 percent of foster children took at least one such drug, even though schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for which the drugs are approved, are extremely rare in young children.

“It’s a significant and important finding, and it should prompt states to improve the quality of care in this area,” said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University who did not contribute to the research.

In the study, mental health researchers analyzed 2003 Medicaid records of 637,924 minors from an unidentified mid-Atlantic state who were either in foster care, getting disability benefits for a diagnosis like severe autism or bipolar disorder, or in a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. All of these programs draw on Medicaid financing. The investigators found that 16,969, or about 3 percent of the total, had received at least one prescription for an antipsychotic drug.

Yet among these, it was the foster children who most often got more than one such prescription at the same time: 9.2 percent, versus 6.8 percent among the children on disability, and just 2.5 percent of those in the needy families program
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/health/research/study-finds-foster-children-often-given-antipsychosis-drugs.html?ref=health

I wonder how many of those children in foster care might be suffering from some sort of undiagnosed neurological problem, or combinations of neurological/cognitive/psychosocial problems that they are trying to suppress with these potent drugs rather than address with careful and comprehensive (and much more costly) diagnostic procedures. It is certainly a population at high risk for such problems--and possibly even for problems that begin in utero and affect fetal development--all of which would be compounded by living in a family structure which could not meet the child's needs, or in which the child was abused, and from which the child had to be removed and placed in foster care. Hopefully, some of the research going on in pediatric neurology and neuropsychology, will make more people, particuarly those in the practice of psychiatry, more attuned to the possibility of such problems, and eventually lead to better interventions for such children.

I enjoyed that article by Yong Zhao. I think we have to help children, and adults as well, to find the milieu, or environment, in which their potential can best be expressed and in which their passions and interests can best flourish, and, even if "usefulness" doesn't follow, personal fulfillment likely will, and that's just as important.

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

LOL you mean by wrecking daring to bring up informations and points of views that questions the group opinion?

As far as the one time and you will be doom anti drug videos link to here I would suggest going to the 1932 reefer madness film and seeing how amazing the similarities in style and story lines they happen to be to that old film.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

You bring no "information," though. You bring your unsubstantiated opinion, and dismiss actual evidence.

Hecklers don't add to the discussion; they detract.

Thanks for the reminder for why I have you on ignore.

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@boomerang,

It's fine, it's a story with a fine result. She got a degree in sociology, got married just about right after college and was an at home mother for some years; went back to school later in accounting and became a CPA, working for the US government until she retired recently. Has a good long marriage where I've seen how they get along as a team (was with them in late 2009 for a couple of weeks). They have two grown boys, one a math genius type and one with math troubles as a child (having to repeat grades in elementary school), that one now being a high school english teacher. They made him vice principal on the fast track but he hated it, and went back to full time teaching. The sons in turn seem to have good marriages/lives after some years of confusion in their late teens.

1 Reply

@firefly,

That was a very informative article. Thank you!

This, in particular, caught my eye:

Code:

In addition, educators are preoccupied with high stakes testing

 (such as MCAS in Massachusetts) that holds them accountable for 

students’ progress in math and literacy, but not for some skills that are

 critical to children on the spectrum, such as social pragmatics or 

emotional selfregulation

Just yesterday I sent a note to Mo's classroom teacher and SpEd teacher about this. They've been having a hard time working out times for Mo to go to SpEd for math. The spend an hour and a half each day on math and his teacher doesn't want him missing the lesson even though it's way over Mo's head. I started suspecting that it was test prep. I reminded them that we opt out of state testing and suggested that Mo might better use that hour and a half working on math fundamentals and writing with the SpEd teacher.

I think it's probably very true that foster kids are over-prescribed anti psychotics. The state really isn't willing to spend the money on getting a real diagnosis and so many people work under the assumption that "love conquers all".

My psychiatrist friend has an adopted daughter who has a full blown attachment disorder. Though she had studied this in school and had worked with children who had the problem she says nobody is capable of understanding unless they've lived it.

One day over coffee we started comparing notes:

The number of people who told us "they were so little when that happened, they should be over it by now".

The number of sly innuendos about how maybe we didn't love our kids enough to really help them overcome their problems.

The number of teachers who told us we if we'd spend an extra half hour on math facts every day that our kids would learn this stuff.

The number of smirks we've counted from "superior" parents about our kid's misbehavior.

It would be SO much easier to drug a kid than it is to deal with the problems.

According to her, a lot of parents demand drugs even when there is no basis for giving them. If she won't prescribe them they find a different doctor.

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@ossobuco,

Thank you. That really is reassuring. I hear so much doom and gloom that it's nice to know about people who have problem but manage to have happy lives anyway.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

Just yesterday I sent a note to Mo's classroom teacher and SpEd teacher about this. They've been having a hard time working out times for Mo to go to SpEd for math. The spend an hour and a half each day on math and his teacher doesn't want him missing the lesson even though it's way over Mo's head. I started suspecting that it was test prep. I reminded them that we opt out of state testing and suggested that Mo might better use that hour and a half working on math fundamentals and writing with the SpEd teacher.

I think it's probably very true that foster kids are over-prescribed anti psychotics. The state really isn't willing to spend the money on getting a real diagnosis and so many people work under the assumption that "love conquers all".

My psychiatrist friend has an adopted daughter who has a full blown attachment disorder. Though she had studied this in school and had worked with children who had the problem she says nobody is capable of understanding unless they've lived it.

One day over coffee we started comparing notes:

The number of people who told us "they were so little when that happened, they should be over it by now".

The number of sly innuendos about how maybe we didn't love our kids enough to really help them overcome their problems.

In my opinion, your years of posting here have irrefutably shown your unlimited love for Mo.

U even made him your AVATAR!

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Yes I am pretty devoted to him. I love him beyond reason.

People don't come right out and say it but they do dance around the issue that if only you loved them enough you would have "fixed" them by now.

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@boomerang,

I was about to say their problems have big differences, but then again, my cousin was adopted. I once knew but forget at what age, but not as other than baby or toddler. Going back to look at photos..

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Not all adopted kids have problems.

But the ones that do can be very confusing and it isn't things well understood by most people -- including Mo's teachers.

For instance: They suggested I have Mo do some extra math at home using a certain web site. "A lot of kids think it's really fun" they said. I pulled it up and asked Mo to sit down and work on it "It's fun!", I said.

After about 30 minutes he decided that I was a traitorous bitch who would never be satisfied with him, that he wasn't good enough for me, that I expected him to always be perfect, that he couldn't trust me, etc. It took a solid week to repair the damage.

It's complicated.

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@boomerang,

boomer, for the longest time I always thought that any problem we've had is
pertaining to "adopted" kids when in reality it can be a problem with any kid. It's just that we pay more attention to the problem and/or stigmatize it to being adopted which is really not true.

Compared to some of the problems biological children give their parents,
including learning and behavioral difficulties, there is really no difference.
I completely did away with this way of thinking - it has nothing to do with
the child being adopted, some kids have problems, others don't, but that's regardless to their biological affiliation.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

According to her, a lot of parents demand drugs even when there is no basis for giving them. If she won't prescribe them they find a different doctor.

this is precisely why my neuropsych pal closed her practice in New York state and returned to Canada.

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

I agree. There is trauma in all kinds of families. I think adoptive families are more willing to dig into it because often they weren't the ones who caused it.

My two neighbor kids were adopted and they're fine.

But early life can and does make a difference with some kids. Prenatal care can make a real difference.

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@ehBeth,

Are the doctors there interconnected so that they can tell when someone is "doctor shopping"?

1 Reply

@boomerang,

Oy.
My cousin didn't deal with that level of feeling shut out (I don't think..) or other things you've spoken about. I really was posting at the start re her dealing with reading, listening, and note taking re her dyslexia back in the fifties and somewhat later. The adoption connection was an afterthought, sort of a way afterthought.

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

Are the doctors there interconnected so that they can tell when someone is "doctor shopping"?

Lots of doctors seem to positively lust to prescribe drugs.

1 Reply

Study links childhood IQ to likelihood of future drug use

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