i watched this documentary last night. i realize there are 2 schools/opinions of thought on this topic. my concern is it appears to me is that children are not being allowed to be children and outgrow "symptoms" rather than labeling them this or that and putting them on meds. there also is scientific documentation that ritalin shrinks the developing brain. the opposing sides agree on this finding.
my granddaughter's behavior during a 2 year period of time mimicked bipolar. we took her to a psychologist not for a label but therapy to give her some coping skills and we were doing the same with her. fast forward to the present-normal, adjusted 9 year old. no symptoms of bipolar. i'm glad we felt therapy and our patience won out. i question pdocs who have too much enthusiasm drugging our children with meds they don't need. many are now found to have no benefit at all. some children in the show were 2 yr. olds dx'ed with bipolar and put on meds. that's very frightening to me. when side effects occur some pdocs prescribe yet another med to counteract the side effects of the first, second, etc. one. perhaps some children do require meds but i feel that should be a last resort to treat them.
Quote:
In The Medicated Child, FRONTLINE producer Marcela Gaviria confronts psychiatrists, researchers and government regulators about the risks, benefits and many questions surrounding prescription drugs for troubled children. The biggest current controversy surrounds the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Formerly called manic depression, bipolar disorder was long believed to exist only in adults. But in the mid-1990s, bipolar in children began to be diagnosed at much higher rates, sometimes in kids as young as 4 years old. "The rates of bipolar diagnoses in children have increased markedly in many communities over the last five to seven years," says Dr. Steven Hyman, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health. "I think the real question is, are those diagnoses right? And in truth, I don't think we yet know the answer."
Like many of the 1 million children now diagnosed with bipolar, 5-year-old Jacob Solomon was initially believed to suffer from an attention deficit disorder. His parents reluctantly started him on Ritalin, but over the next five years, Jacob would be put on one drug after another. "It all started to feel out of control," Jacob's father, Ron, told FRONTLINE. "Nobody ever said we can work with this through therapy and things like that. Everywhere we looked it was, 'Take meds, take meds, take meds.'"
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Last edited by madisgram; Sep 30, 2011 at 10:30 AM.
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