new book out showing we are NOT over medicating kids.

[Guest guest]

Most of us at one point or many points in time have had to sit there

and agonize over the decision " To medicate or not to medicate " . I have

never seen anyone take this decision lightly. If you look at the news

for the past 15 years you would think that people where carelessly

over medicating their kids to make the adults life easier. Well a

reporter who believed this little myth decided to write a book about

the over medication of our children. Turns out this reporter was a

good reporter. She went out and did endless research and when what she

found did not back up her theory instead of twisting the facts this

reporter changed her theory. Now the reporter has put out her book and

the main argument of the book is our kids are not being medicated for

the adults benefit but for the kids mental health needs. Here is a

review of this new book. I will run to the library and reserve my

chance to take it out today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23book.html

Doing an About-Face on ‘Overmedicated’ Children

By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.

Picture a cupped hand. A capsule and a pill lie in the palm. The hand

is extended toward a small child. The caption reads, “Take your

vitamins.”

It’s better than a Rorschach test, that image: most people will erupt

with a passionate visceral reaction, especially if they deduce that

the proffered medications are not vitamins at all, but strong

psychoactive drugs like Ritalin and Prozac.

For some, the picture symbolizes the best kind of parenting, proactive

and nurturing. For others, it is an evocative summary of everything

that is wrong with our culture, as pushy parents blithely dose hapless

children with unnecessary medication in the name of conformity and

achievement.

The journalist Judith Warner was a die-hard member of the second camp,

and wanted to spread the word. Six years ago, she happily landed a

book contract to explore and document the overmedication of American

youth.

Readers of Domestic Disturbances, the online column Ms. Warner wrote

for The New York Times until December, will be familiar with what

happened next. She sallied forth to interview all the pushy parents,

irresponsible doctors and overmedicated children she could find — and

lo, she could barely find any. After several years of dead ends,

missed deadlines and worried soul-searching, she was forced to

reconsider her premise and start all over again.

“We’ve Got Issues” is the product of that unusual cycle. Journalists

who cobble together enough anecdotes to support a preset agenda are

all too common, and presumably Ms. Warner could have managed to do

just that. Instead, she actually let her research guide her thoughts:

it whirled her perspective a full 180 degrees and, as she would be the

first to affirm, lifted the scales from her eyes.

“A couple of simple truths have become clear,” she writes with the

passion of a new convert. “That the suffering of children with mental

health issues (and their parents) is very real. That almost no parent

takes the issue of psychiatric diagnosis lightly or rushes to ‘drug’

his or her child; and that responsible child psychiatrists don’t,

either. And that many children’s lives are essentially saved by

medication, particularly when it’s combined with evidence-based forms

of therapy.”

How could she have been so convinced otherwise? Half the book is

rueful legwork devoted to answering that question.

Ms. Warner points out that she was hardly alone in her previous

assumptions: it is accepted wisdom in some circles, including, oddly,

liberal-left “moms” and right-wing radio audiences, that the milder

variants of attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder and autism

are just different ways of saying “normal, but not good enough.”

Both groups share a disdain of parents who buy into those diagnoses, a

horror of the medications used to treat them and a deep nostalgia for

the simpler childhoods of past eras, when the child in question would

definitely have been left alone.

Ms. Warner is sympathetic: “Believing that our toxic world is either

producing symptoms in children or classifying them as abnormal when

they don’t conform is seductive. After all, there is so much wrong

with the lives of children today.”

She concedes that all the pressures to achieve socially,

intellectually and financially can make a toxic brew. “We have to do

something about our current social environment,” she writes, “because

it’s creating some pretty big problems.”

But she remains immutable on one point: the myth of the overmedicated

child is just that — an allegory but not a reality.

Ms. Warner reported out the spectrum of pediatric psychiatric

disorders with dozens of interviews. Most of the stories are

variations on a theme: well-educated, sophisticated parents,

unwilling, at first, to recognize a sick and miserable child who needs

professional help.

Once help is finally sought, it is often quite difficult to obtain:

there are few child psychiatrists in this country (about 7,000, by

most estimates), fewer still good ones, and the usual plethora of

dubious alternatives to orthodox medical care. Finally, after a

reasonable facsimile of care is obtained, the child is usually better,

but nowhere near perfect. “We don’t know if he will have an

independent life or will be institutionalized for life” is a typical

conclusion.

But the big picture is far brighter than its components. Ms. Warner

argues that child psychiatry is actually one of the major public

health success stories of our time. As one expert tells her, when it

comes to mental health, “the horse is out of the barn by adulthood.”

Treating troubled children is more than symptom management for a

calmer classroom: the medications seem actually to change the

structure of the brain, helping it develop in what all evidence

indicates is the right direction. More children in treatment should

spell the beginnings of a healthier adult world.

By her last section, Ms. Warner has worked herself up into something

of a lather as she argues passionately for health care reform to ease

access to treatment, for more good doctors who understand medications,

for better drug research and far tighter reins on the pharmaceutical

industry. Much of this has been stated somewhat more expertly and

elegantly elsewhere.

But then again, we are all inured to expert voices preaching on these

topics. Those who disagree stopped listening long ago, and Ms.

Warner’s earnest, wide-eyed exhortations will not bring them around.

But for the choir, her version of the sermon will make a pleasant

change.