"In kids aged 0 to 5 years old, 53.8 percent of antipsychotic use is for ADHD."

That age bracket is what concerns me the most. That is the Rebecca Riley age bracket.

Antipsychotics are hard core chemicals, why are they being used in little kids.

Replace the term antipsychotic with the more accurate description of these drugs - MAJOR TRANQUILIZERS - and you'll understand what is really happening.

I can't wait for all of the parents who think their children really do need constant sedation because of purported brain chemical output defects to write in with their descriptions. One of my favorites from John Mcanami (sp)'s sight is the one about a woman who had her 3 year old diagnosed with bipolar after the three year old jumped out of a second story window. Her response to my concern that maybe a three year old shouldn't be left locked in a second story room with a wide open window was, I'm a good mother, you don't understand.

Whew, since Florida's quarterly antipsychotic utilization rate for 3/06 - 5/06 was 14.84 per 1000 children ages 0 to 17 there is still plenty of room to Grow the Market. It would be valuable to know if earlier Medicaid records could be mined to determine how (and if) children who took antipsychotics are faring as adults, ex. how many are still alive versus cohorts who were not on antipsychotics.

When it comes to prescribing, practitioners too often medicate little kids like adults and treat adults like little kids.

One thing that's important here is that it's 50% of kids on Medicaid -- it's foster kids and kids who are economically deprived who really have no one advocating for them that are being treated and medicated (i.e.controlled) by state agencies that are in turn being taken advantage of by pharmaceutical companies. Talk about a neglect of human rights -- this is it. You could find a similar rate of medicating foster children around the country I'm sure.

I only have one question: Do these parents have shit for brains?

What crop is the "atypical nation" growing?
peaking 19.9/1000 texas . I guess the psychiatrists who wanted to test the theory of preventing schizophrenia with antipsychotics(tranquilizers) have succeeded.
"plenty of room to Grow the Market" wrote Joe
No I dissagree. If the prescribers follow the pseudo-science of incidence of approx 1 in 123 or 0.81%(for schizophrenia), they have exceeded the market already.

Sara, exactly re: foster kids. One inpatient private hospital teen unit my daughter went to were 99% foster kids, being treated for behaviour "issues" and medicated, while waiting for RTC placement. Many teens told me they wished they had a parent visit them, but they don't. I've seen some now as legal adults, back inside adult psych ward units. It's a long and sad story re: foster kids and medicaid and that hospital also has a contract with the state of Washington for payments.
~
Also, I linked an article in "Abilify Sales Up" on this site that states the time bracket listed here and illegal promotion of antipsychotic Abilify by BMS [BMS was fined big bucks]in kids.[lots more to that article].

"Welcome to the atypical nation."

We seem to be witnessing the pathologizing of the full range of human experience. As alchemicalmusings put it: http://alchemicalmusings.org/2007/06/13/we-are-all-dying-sick-and-crazy/

as the "mission critical" drugs come out from under patent, Big Pharma is desperate to replace its blockbuster profit pills. Nowadays they seem to be in the business of selling disease - disease which they conveniently also sell the cure for. Quite dastardly.

i too believe that these are medicaid records factors into this in a big way.

In a few years we will be seeing a lot of young kids with movement disorders as a result of taking these drugs. And all they will get from their doctors is "what's the big deal. It's a side effect. Don't worry about it".

In writing that there was "plenty of room to grow the market", I was being facetious. I can imagine that some big wheel from pharma might be thinking, "Well, if 14.84 per 1000 children are taking antipsychotics, then we still have lots of market potential with the other 985." Sad.

Jane, I imagine the doctors will be saying the movement disorders are a symptom of either bipolar disorder I or schizophrenia, which ever one they have diagnosed the drug side effects as, similar to the tactic of Eli Lilly in saying that zyprexa doesn't cause diabetes, schizophrenia does.

I completely agree about the strong role Medicaid plays here...yet another example of how we would rather tranquilize our abused youth (further abusing them I would say) then stand up against societal injustice. The country as a whole has shifted away from taking responsibility - prevention, and toward entitlement - intervention.

Tardive dyskinesia, definitely. But potentially even more troubling is that these kids have learned drug-seeking behaviour twice: first, by being told that behavioural disorders need drug treatment and, second, by hardwiring their brains for addiction. At some point in the far future, I really believe the current "drug 'em" climate will be soon to be the child abuse that it is.

Today it is politically incorrect, and socially (accepted) wrong, to physically abuse children. Evidence of it was/is obvious. This has created a vacuum. What is left for the adults as a method to control misbehaving children? (Why children misbehave and when did this start? is another matter)
The rise in prescriptions/medication matchs the decline of corporal punishment in children.

Hi, Philip.

Please consider posting information on this conference: http://www.sfu.ca/madcitizenship-conference/submit.htm

It looks like it's going to be wonderful.

Thanks.

Francesca

It seems to make some sense that the medicating of children is filling a vacuum that was created by the declining use of corporal punishment. Since people are probably basically the same now as they were before these medications were invented, there is the obvious question of how the same types of behavior were dealt with before there were drugs to deal with them. I think there may also have been more benign ways that similar problems were dealt with in the past (as is illustrated by the childhood experience of Ansel Adams, for example), but they may have been more the exception than the rule.

Sometimes I wonder the same type of thing about people in general - since people who lived before the dawn of psychiatric drugs were probably not much different than they are today, how did they manage to live with the same conditions? From what little I know of history, I think the numbers of people taking medications nowadays are much more than those who were crippled or unable to go on due to psychiatric-type problems in earlier centuries or decades, so how did they cope before chemicals? What used to fill the vacuum that is now being filled by prescription drugs?

re kent "how did they cope before chemicals?" Depending on the era, I think the masses used the chemical alcohol. Then before that we had real diseases to worry about.Penicillin

Regarding Mark's comment about the rise in prescription drug used to control children as it becomes un pc to beat your child, this is probably true though these days beating your child is not a sign you need to be prosecuted, it's a sign the little brute has bipolar or adhd. These diagnoses make physical abuse of your child politcally correct. "It's not my fault I hit him, turns out his was crazy," the evil parents can whine at their NAMI parents support meeting.

I agree with the people that say the rise in hyperactive kids correlates with the increase in technology and decline in physical activity in society in general, also of course with the obesitiy levels and rise in "mental illness" in adults.

As for penicillin and disease, so many people are immune to antibiotics these days but that's another can of worms.

yeah the old medicine man bottled tonic [alcohol], and also the nutrients in the soil were actually there,[as opposed to now]so that eating the non-processed foods actually did give the vitamin/minerals the body needed. Besides not having air pollution, etc.Kids worked alongside family in business, and also were expected to do chores, lots of reasons why no child was laying in front of a TV whining he/she is bored, or being taken to walmart during nap time. American lifestyle has changed, obviously, and this is why the medication paradigm can/will/is out of control. The kids who couldn't sit still in class in the old days, or who mouthed off, ended up cleaning the chalkboard after school or sent to the Principal's office. I remember gum chewing got me there once. So did talking.

How do you think? if the reason interferes with evolution, it too evolution? its soon be like throatjobs
.

How do you think? if the reason interferes with evolution, it too evolution? its soon be like try to check
.

How do you think? if the reason interferes with evolution, it too evolution? its soon be like Interesting Pages
.