"Most of you know that I am opposed to giving psych meds to children except under extreme circumstances (autism is one, psychosis is another)."

That's a bit off label of you isn't it?
You continue to surprise me.
Maybe you should try a dose of this.

There is some (slender) evidence in favour of risperidone for autism, but considering the side-effects and the extremely problematic nature of getting anything like informed consent from autistic kids ...

Given the recent, rather dubious, autism epidemic, I'd say we can expect to see a big push from Big Pharma to make 'APs for ASD, ASAP' into a mainstream treatment.

As you suggested there does need to be a study of what happens to these medicated children. I usually assume that giving drugs to developing brains is a sure recipe for dysfunction in adulthood. I, like you, don't buy that "early intervention" is going to mitigate problems in adulthood. And given my personal experience with drugs tearing me down over the years, I'm apt to assume the opposite.

In any case, your questions are good ones.

While I admire this blog tremendously and have often been greatly inspired by it, what I think is missing is any attempt to look at alternatives for kids, as well as adults. Other healthy interventions that can help children live healthy, happier, and more productive lives.

There are alternatives to drug treatment and most people simply refuse to consider these other approaches. People are completely deaf when someone suggests that something as simple as diet and nutrition can help children and adults feel better.

There is a movie available on google video. Do a search "The Drugging of Our Children." Teachers in this movie have seen a direct correlation between what children eat and their behavior. I will go so far as to suggest that food can ultimately heal if one knows what they are doing. Diet and nutrition is healing me. It's not in my imagination. Why won't people look at thousands of anecdotal stories. There is not pharma to back up studies of natural healing so the the scientific among us refuse to consider alternatives. This is not balanced thinking.

In a world where mental health care is driven by big pharma, we have to be open to evidence of other kinds that don't have the financial backing of the medical model. We are not. We refuse to hear the individuals story and stories. But if we seek out info on alternatives they are there and so are the stories of recovery.

We choose to be blind at the peril of our childrens' and nations future.

Medicating autistic kids is a pretty questionable topic, there is quite a spectrum of autism and the behaviors that could pose problems. Working with autistic teens and young kids; the ones who were medicated(risperdal)were the ones who bit me, melted down more(like on the carpet at the feet rages)etc. once medications had started. The behavior in the kid is what always triggered me to inquire if a medication was added.

I think this post has a wonderful point. I went to school at at "non-conforming experimental school". We had a teacher who was a hippee, and I call him that because he did. He and another teacher both taught us war protest songs for choir and we planted trees on arbor day. My most memorable baseball game was the one that broke my nose; and I went to school with 2 black eyes that the kids eagerly awaited to see the next day. I was separated in class on a regular basis from my friends for talking. I got straight A's in any level of school I attended. I got busted by a crew of a train that had to stop when I had loaded lawn furniture on the tracks to see what would happen. I still have pennies I placed there on a regular basis for flattening. Medicating me? I was told to go outside if I became too annoying asking questions, or go read a Nancy Drew book. As a teen I spent a lot of time at neighborhood illegal street racing strips. [along with ballet/ice skating]

I also want to know where the generation of medicated kids are that include my daughter. I suspect they are all off or on reduced medications.

Like my daughter's friend and neighbor since she was 2 years old. He was on Ritalin since age 4.Classic case of teacher wanted a kid to sit still, and the teachers gave his mother hell for it. He climbed onto the roof, sat on top of the basketball hoop, and pulled the fire alarm at school at age 5 "because it said PULL" was his fabulous remark. He was a literal thinker. His dx changed when my daughter was given meds for suicidal thoughts on a bed-wetting med and dx OCD. Her dx changed to Childhood Bipolar --3 months before her friend.

His dx changed from ADHD as a secondary dx to Childhood Bipolar Disorder at age 12 and was given Depakote.[like my daughter]Previous to that, at Summmer camp together; he was sent home early due to threatening to jump off of a cliff:with suicidal ideations. He had been placed on Paxil as well.[for social anxiety!]Both of these kids saw the same psychiatrist and ended up with the same dx and medications.

Both are grown now. He's working, and my daughter soon will be. Both of them are not on any original medications from childhood.

They both call the now fired psychiatrist "Dr. Dip." Smart kids.

Gianna brings up a very important and under-discussed topic re: nutrition. Anyone ever walk into a school lunchroom lately? Blue dye, Red dye all in the name "fruit snacks",& "sport drinks". My main job in the lunchroom was opening "juice pouches" that contain no juice. The cafeteria food is part government/ part baked on site. The fat content alone in those chicken rings or mini corndogs are rediculous. Some schools do have salad bars now; usually the kids load up their trays with "bacon bits" and ranch salad dressing and eat it w/ a spoon.

Smart shoppers who want good nutrition should shop on the exterior walls of the grocery stores. Most everything in the middle is a marketing blitz of bad nutrition. If you want oatmeal without sugar/ look at your feet in cereal row--grocery stores play the marketing game as much as Pharma does with promoting medications--the eye level products are more expensive and almost always lack nutrition.

Mental wellness is directly related to proper diet, and wellness of all parts of the body. If something is wrong in one place, it can show up as a mental illness.

This has been tapped into aggressively with marketing of "Organic" products, and I'm betting it's not a coincidence. Those products aren't regulated, but consumers love to buy them thinking they are going to improve something in their life.

I was always alarmed at the lack of good nutrition in the psych wards. The primary focus on medications prevailed over everything else, right down to fresh air and exercise.

Gianna--

You're barking up the right tree--only no one will listen. The food/naturopathic options are pooh-poohed by most. Where's the money in foodstuffs? And naturopaths/homeopaths, as everyone knows, are quacks. (Tongue firmly in cheek, here.) It has always been amazing to me that if a pharmaceutical company can form it into a pill and call it a drug, it (whatever "it" is) is a good thing. E.g., something as "inconsequential" as Vitamin C or phytochemicals are unimportant DESPITE scientific studies that indicate otherwise. (Lest I sound like a naturopath cheerleader, let me admit that, like with any other "new" paradigm, there's lots of room for charlatans to prey on desperate patients.)

Last year, I believe the Washington and Michigan cherry growers got into trouble for advertising health benefits of fresh cherry consumption. Ohmigod! A natural, whole food could be healthful! Not according to the FDA. Small growers and medium-sized distributors had to heed FDA's warning and make certain that nothing so blatant as "health claims" appeared on their packaging!

And if you think historically, how long have mass-produced pharmaceuticals been available to us. Mankind seems to have survived for a long time without consuming man-made chemical concoctions on a daily (or more frequent) basis. While advancements in modern medicine have extended our lives, if we are merely living longer and not better, I ask, to what purpose. (Yes, I've seen the ads for octogenarians who are taking up skydiving . . . but I think that is the exception rather than the rule.)

Until we see doctors who are willing to expand their thinking (along with the medical schools that teach them) to incorporate integrative practices, we will see no great progress. And until they start recognizing that ingesting one toxin to alleviate a particular disease, that toxin impacts other biologic systems--we just don't know how, or when, or to what degree.

Patients, too, must unfortunately bear some degree of blame. Our society has the attention span of a gnat; we want--no we demand--quick fixes, consequences be damned. (Isn't that how Vioxx soared then crashed?)

Perhaps it has something to do with the american adult philosophy of the "child as commodity" or "property"?

Reminds me of that old joke (or maybe I made it up ;-))

Q: What's the difference between being precocious and being manic?

A: About 8 years (ba-da-bum)

This joke is sadly starting to show its age - the punchline would now need to be updated -

A: 25mg

If you can show me a reproducible double-blind clinical study showing that homeopathic medicine works, I'll give up my meds. (Good luck!) In the meantime, the meds I'm on have given me significant relief without sedating me. I'll take a better course when it presents itself, but you're barking up the wrong tree.

But you're using two different criteria Joel.

For homeos you're demanding Cochrane standard trials, but for the meds you just want to know if they make you feel significantly better.

As you'd know from the RCTs, when a trial of psychiatric medicine shows any positive result at all its usually less than 10% better than the placebo (e.g. 66% improve on the active, 60% improve on the placebo).

So, odds are about 10-1 that your improvement is the placebo affect anyway. So there's a 90% chance that the homeos would work as well for you as the meds - if you just close your eyes and believe ...

Joel--

Spoken like a true scientist. (BTW, I'm married to one, and skepticism is one of its trademarks.) Unfortunately, double-blind scientific studies in the homeo/naturo areas are practically non-existent; who's going to fund such studies--the Broccoli Growers of America? the Cod-Liver-Oil Coalition? Certainly not Big Pharma!!

Anecdotal "proof" sometimes has more merit than "scientists" allow. Here's a little story: Years ago, we had a dog with hip dysplasia. A product was being introduced that was truly naturopathic ('active' ingredients: alfalfa and blue mussels). Husband was given a supply, which he used on the dog, and the improvement was remarkable. But, with scientific skepticism, he wrote to the producer, asking for double-blind, clinical data; when they informed him that nothing like that existed, he wrote a letter calling them 'snake-oil salesmen' and "charlatans" (among the kinder terms he used.) When the supply of "medicine" was exhausted, the dog began losing mobility and was in obvious pain. Too embarrassed to recontact the producer, he had a friendly vet tech secure another supply, and within days of reintroducing the 'medicine', the dog showed marked improvement. (We kept the dog on the product for the remaining 4 years of her life. The product did not 'cure' hip dysplasia, but it gave her an additional 3-plus years of acceptable quality of life. No double blind, purely anecdotal--and a precursor of the glucosamine chondroitin that has become a staple for veterinarian arthritis pain relief.)

As pseudo-science and statistical manipulation increase in the U.S. to answer questions in a manner most beneficial to the pharma funding the studies, the validity of "double-blind, clinical trials" is becoming evermore questionable.

I actually do a combo of all of the above. I take lithium and lamictal and then manage the side-effects with herbs and vitamins and the such. My diet is in general pretty good. I take supplements for other general good health purposes. That being said, I have tried ALOT of natural health remedies over the years that didn't work. My very last option was going on psych meds. And I am doing better. Not cured or perfect, but better.

Chloe--I know I am anti-pharmaceutical, but I don't deny that if we consider the complexities of individuals, and their responses to a host of chemicals (and foods and supplements), there is no single or simple answer or treatment.

I guess what I object to so strongly are those advocates who INSIST that if the cure/treatment isn't produced by a member of Big Pharma, backed with often questionable "scientific" literature, and prescribed by an M.D. (who may or may not profit from such prescribing)--then IT CAN'T WORK!

Reproducible, double-blind studies prove nothing when methodology is flawed and data/statistics are manipulated to "prove" a pre-determined outcome.