Psychiatric and ADHD Drugs Being Over Prescribed for Children

I'm hearing a lot about children being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed things like ritalin or diagnosed with depression and prescribed anti-depressents. Does anyone else think this is due to drug companies trying to push their product at the expense of children and their families?

 

Or lazy parents or a combination of both, but I'd say drugs are the treatment of choice way too often.

 

Anytime money changes hands, the government gets a cut. So, what wasn't OK years ago, over medicating children, is a whole industry now, and brings in a lot of money to many people, especially taxes. So it's overlooked, and even encouraged by many people in the medical and government lines of work(FDA, Public Schools, Police).

One sec, imagine this, if America actually exercised, rested, and ate like they should, Type-2 Diabetes would almost be eliminated, or at least any need for meds would be. So, not a dime is spent on prevention, because the medical industry amount for over 1/20th - 1/10th of the GDP. And a good GDP is a political asset.

 

From what i have read and from personal experience, doctors tend to be over eager to prescribe ssri anti depressants to anyone. I think they see it as a miracle cure to everyones problems. Yes drug therapy has been proven to be an excellent form of therapy but in most cases of mild depression(Dysthymia) cognitive theropy is just as, if not more effective. Doing exercise has also been proven to be more effective than anti depressants in many cases of depression.

As for adhd a change in the childs lifestyle will play a massive difference. Im not to sure if it has been proven but my farther was a doc and he tried to make parents change the childs lifestyle before putting them on ritalin. Eating organic food that has been handmade and regular exercise will calm down the effect off adhd considerably. Unfortunatly many parents are to lazy and just feed their children mcdonalds or processed foods that are quick and easy to cook.

 

Well, I am very glad to have found some others who agree. I think it's so unfortunate that kids get pills thrown at them instead of the attention and real diagnosis they need. Kids don't have a defiency of prozac, but like you says it's diet and excercise related.

 

That was very well said. I'd like to add that if just a dime was spent on prevention, we would save billions of money in emergency room visits down the line.

 

Most children with ADHD don't have it, they just give out a diagnose to a normal kid that are little more playfull than the others so the phsyciatrist doesn't get unemployed.

This might sound extreme but a phsyciatrist(Gilbert (don't remember his last name)) invented a phsycologic ADHD-like disease called DAMP. His theory was succesfull in almost 10 years, until some doctors started to question his theory, then he burnt up all his material, and now he's in prison. More than 100.000 healthy children have got this diagnose.

Many normal people can get ADHD behaviours depending on how much fastfood they eat. Lacking of important minerals, vitamins and proteins can make a kid be ADHD like.

 

from my personal experience, my advice would be to parents to get many different opinions before accepting the first diagnosis. They are simply opinions given by a 1/2 after meeting the child, and everyone will have a different opinion. it took me 3 different doctors to get the right medication for me and correct diagnosis. it can be more difficult to diagnose children because of the constant phases in childhood and adolesence. I do agree that too many children are being slapped a label just to avoid rehabilitation.

 

From what I've learned being ADD, and having a sister ADHD, and now a son who acts like a nut, you have to run it off.

Meaning, parents don't understand the importance of exercise, if you do what sports couches have done for years, you beat the kid down to the point where they will listen. This means running sprints till they are willing to stand still and listen.

I plan to build a giant hampster wheel in my house, and let the little one run, and power my house, before school each day.

later,

tom

 

wow, seems intense. guess you know your little guy best. i'm sure its very difficult!

 

You bet i ran with my kids until they couldn't go no more--and they tired out way before me. You know the old saying' if you can't bet them joining them.

 

One thing that concerns me in particular is that these drugs can be addictive and costly without any real benefits. This is might make money drug companies a lot of money, but it's terrible if you're a child who is on the other side. With ADHD drugs alone $3 billion dollars a year is being spent on drugs for children and some of these are even under the age of 4.