Over Medicating Our Youth provides knowledge for parents, educators, and physicians to consider the etiology or causation of behavioral conditions before medicating children with psychiatric and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) symptoms. The prescribing of stimulant and psychiatric medications prior to ruling out nutritional, physiological, and environmental causation for behavioral conditions requires reform. This book provides guidance for parents, educators, and physicians to utilize effective alternative treatments plans as well as assessments prior to prematurely medicating children. The recent United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) Child Foster Care report uncovered the injustice of overmedicating children with ADD stimulant and psychiatric drugs. The GAO report proves that a positive change in the treatment of childhood behavioral conditions should involve a more comprehensive assessment as to the causation of behavioral symptoms.
This book exposes the skyrocketing rate of antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children, identifies grave dangers when children's mental health care is driven by market forces, describes effective therapeutic care for children typically prescribed antipsychotics, and explains how to navigate a drug-fueled mental health system. Since 2001, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of antipsychotics to treat children for an ever-expanding list of symptoms. The prescription rate for toddlers, preschoolers, and middle-class children has doubled, while the prescribing rate for low-income children covered by Medicaid has quadrupled. In a majority of cases, these drugs are neither FDA-approved nor justified by research for the children's conditions. This book examines the reasons behind the explosion of antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children, spotlighting the historical and cultural factors as well as the role of the pharmaceutical industry in this trend; and discusses the ethical and legal responsibilities and ramifications for non-MDs—psychologists in particular—who work with children treated with antipsychotics. Contributors explain how the pharmaceutical industry has inserted itself into every step of medical education, rendering objectivity in the scientific understanding, use, and approvals of such drugs impossible. The text describes the relentless marketing behind the drug sales, even going as far as to provide coloring and picture books for children related to the drug at issue. Valuable information about legal recourse that families and therapists can take when their children or patients have been harmed by antipsychotic drugs and alternative approaches to working with children with emotional and behavioral challenges is also provided.
The Children's Mental Health Industry, like any other industry, is built on stakeholders, products, and consumers'and the institutional reach of drug makers is far deeper and wider than commonly understood. The past twenty years in particular have seen tremendous distortion of the health care system's ultimate and intended mission to reduce suffering, promote health and improve healthcares outcomes via carefully considered, scientifically based treatment. While having made wonderful advances, the pharmaceutical industry is guilty of rampant abuse in encouraging overmedication. Between 2009 and 2014, major pharmaceutical manufacturers were fined more than $11 billion for illegal trade practices, many involving the illegal promotion of ?off-label? drug use, which is what killed my son. I was surprised to learn that atypical antipsychotics as a drug class, at $16 billion in annual sales, are now second in sales only to cancer drugs. Also, many of the recipients are under eighteen years old, a population for which many of these drugs have never received explicit FDA approval, but they are prescribed at a doctor's discretion under a loosely structured methodology called off-label prescribing.During that same time, due to the increasing dependence on medication, there has been a dramatic reduction in other forms of therapy -- especially psychotherapy and counseling. In fact there is an inverse relationship -- the more medication, the less non-medication approaches. You would expect, then, that this trend would be supported by results indicating that our children are getting healthier. The unfortunate fact, however, is just the opposite -- and will continue to worsen as long as the unjustified drug-orientation continues to be eagerly supported by psychiatrists, insurance companies, drug companies as well as school systems.I hope in writing Overmedicated and Undertreated and sharing my son's story there will be the emotional hook to help galvanize minds around this increasingly issue of over-medication and under-treatment. This is a cautionary tale that serves as a powerful illustration of the damaging and deeply institutionalized conflicts of interest begging for reform in our toxic Children's Mental Health Industry. Please go to OvermedicatedandUndertreated.com for more information
The American Epidemic: Solutions for Over Medicating Our Youth provides new knowledge for parents, educators, all healthcare professionals, and public health policymakers to help rule out underlying risk factors of behavioral conditions prior to premature drug therapy. Nutritional, physiological, and environmental risk factors have created a behavioral health crisis in America. The American Epidemic: Solutions for Over Medicating Our Youth reveals how to eliminate these risk factors and revert children to normal behavior without drug therapy. Also discussed is the prudent use of drug therapy protocols to prevent harmful side effects.
A truly international collection, this volume features new global research examining the cultural construction of youth, through the dissemination of moral panics. This is the first book to make the most of the latest contemporary research to examine this
ADHD in children and adolescents is a neurodevelopmental disorder, which is recognized by the clinicians all over the world. ADHD is a clinical diagnosis based on reliable history, reports from home and school and a physical examination to rule out any other underlying medical conditions. ADHD can cause low self-esteem in the child and impair quality of life for the child and the family. It is known that ADHD is a chronic illness and that clinicians needed to use chronic illness principles in treating it. The last 10 years have seen an increase in the number of medications that have been approved for the treatment of ADHD. This book has tried to address some of the issues in ADHD.
A surprising new look at the rise of ADHD in America, arguing for a better paradigm for diagnosing and treating our children In 1987, only 3 percent of American children were diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD. By 2000, that number jumped to 7 percent, and in 2014 the number rose to an alarming 11 percent. To combat the disorder, two thirds of these children, some as young as three years old, are prescribed powerful stimulant drugs like Ritalin and Adderall to help them cope with symptoms. Meanwhile, ADHD rates have remained relatively low in other countries such as France, Finland, and the United Kingdom, and Japan, where the number of children diagnosed with and medicated for ADHD is a measly 1 percent or less. Alarmed by this trend, family therapist Marilyn Wedge set out to understand how ADHD became an American epidemic. If ADHD were a true biological disorder of the brain, why was the rate of diagnosis so much higher in America than it was abroad? Was a child's inattention or hyperactivity indicative of a genetic defect, or was it merely the expression of normal behavior or a reaction to stress? Most important, were there alternative treatments that could help children thrive without resorting to powerful prescription drugs? In an effort to answer these questions, Wedge published an article in Psychology Today entitled "Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD" in which she argued that different approaches to therapy, parenting, diet, and education may explain why rates of ADHD are so much lower in other countries. In A Disease Called Childhood, Wedge examines how myriad factors have come together, resulting in a generation addictied to stimulant drugs, and a medical system that encourages diagnosis instead of seeking other solutions. Writing with empathy and dogged determination to help parents and children struggling with an ADHD diagnosis, Wedge draws on her decades of experience, as well as up-to-date research, to offer a new perspective on ADHD. Instead of focusing only on treating symptoms, she looks at the various potential causes of hyperactivity and inattention in children and examines behavioral and environmental, as opposed to strictly biological, treatments that have been proven to help. In the process, Wedge offers parents, teachers, doctors, and therapists a new paradigm for child mental health--and a better, happier, and less medicated future for American children
Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.
At the dawn of the last century, leading scientists and politicians giddily predicted that science—especially Darwinian biology—would supply solutions to all the intractable problems of American society, from crime to poverty to sexual maladjustment. Instead, politics and culture were dehumanized as scientific experts began treating human beings as little more than animals or machines. In criminal justice, these experts denied the existence of free will and proposed replacing punishment with invasive “cures” such as the lobotomy. In welfare, they proposed eliminating the poor by sterilizing those deemed biologically unfit. In business, they urged the selection of workers based on racist theories of human evolution and the development of advertising methods to more effectively manipulate consumer behavior. In sex education, they advocated creating a new sexual morality based on “normal mammalian behavior” without regard to longstanding ethical and religious imperatives. Based on extensive research with primary sources and archival materials, John G. West’s captivating Darwin Day in America tells the story of how American public policy has been corrupted by scientistic ideology. Marshaling fascinating anecdotes and damning quotations, West’s narrative explores the far-reaching consequences for society when scientists and politicians deny the essential differences between human beings and the rest of nature. It also exposes the disastrous results that ensue when experts claiming to speak for science turn out to be wrong. West concludes with a powerful plea for the restoration of democratic accountability in an age of experts.
