why are we medicating so many of our children?

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^^^ These cat and dog analogies confuse me too. Especially when a better analogy would involve domesticated dogs versus dingos (which evolved from once-domesticated dogs bought to Australia by humans). Or domesticated cats versus stray cats. Or perhaps the different response of a dog person to a dog's behavior, than the response of someone who has never had a dog.

I've got Autism, I take things literally and cannot work out things between the lines!! !! !

Perhaps another way to look at this whole issue though is whether there is something that parents feel they have not been offered, that would help them not to medicate and the like. As I said, I have issues with the amounts of medications being given, but that does not mean there is no role and never will be a role for them. But I do often feel that parents and even people in general are given very options other than medication??

Bjcirceleb, by this quote, I declare that your attempt at disguising your failure to read the entire thread as "autism" is futile ( you won't fool me, I 'm no dog )

I am a parent to a child with AS and another child with ADHD. Our child with AS is not on medications. Our child with ADHD is and has been since he was 7. We tried everything holistic we could think of to help him. When he told me one night that his brain felt like a pinball machine, I felt as his parent I had to give the meds a try. I thought about the long term affects of these meds. I come from a family with many undiagnosed ADHD. These people are so messed up from self medicating with drugs and alcohol, jail time for DWIs, failed marriages, and financially messed up. So I knew the long term affects of NOT medicating my child, and I decided to try the lesser of the two evils. He is now 11 and we take him off his meds during the summer and on holiday breaks.

I just wanted to ask how many medicated children are due to school problems? I mean if some parents medicate children only for school time then I would say that schooling is a problem not childs behavior.

You have a great point. I do think the schools could probably do more. In our case, his teacher worked with him and us. The issue with our little guy was his inability to remain in his seat. He was constantly moving and disrupting everyone around him. His teacher tried many things to work with him. We simply ran out of solutions. She allowed him to give her a signal to walk to the end of the hallway, go to the back of the room and bounce on an inflatable chair, got him a special seat that allowed him to bounce while sitting at his desk. He was unable to finish his schoolwork because of all these distractions. We did not take this issue lightly, it was a very tough decision. We did not want to put our child on medications, we blamed the schools, blamed ourselves, and blamed the teachers. It took many months, many doctor consultations, a ton of research, and reading for us to fully understand and come to terms with this. For our son, it was not behaviors that the teachers did not want to deal with or as some have said to us, "It is an excuse not to be a parent." His ADHD was preventing him from learning anything. He is also a gifted child, and we have since moved him to a different school which is more structured and has a more challenging curriculum. He is doing much better in this environment, but still struggles at times. Those who were quick to judge us as parents for making our decision, did not understand our family history, the above and beyond his teachers did for him, or how much learning he was missing out on, not to mention the stress this put on our son.

Well, I was put on ritalin when I was three and traded that out with adderall and celexa when I was sixteen. I've been off the celexa for 9 months now. I'm guessing it's because mom liked how I behaved when I was medicated. I was well-behaved, not as loud or weird, almost normal. I was the daughter my mother always wanted when I was medicated. So yeah, most kids are medicated because it's easier on the schools and the parents. :/

I am sorry you had to go through that, it is rare that children are put on at such a young age and I would have seriously questioned the doctor. From what I have read, an ADHD diagnosis cannot be truly accurate until at least age 6. Frankly, I enjoy my son when he is not medicated, which is one of the reasons we do not medicate on school breaks. Please try to keep in mind that every situation is different, including mine and yours. Through your experience, you will make wiser decisions with your children.

My therapist was convinced that I will forever be behind my peers if I didn't get medicated and start speaking ASAP. If I didn't really have ADHD back then, I have it now as I can't focus at all when I'm not on them and I don't know how to cope with problems without medicating myself in some respect. I wish they only gave medication to those who would not be able to succeed without them. Maybe then I'd have the chance of being normal. Children? Ha. Even though I have always wanted to be a mom I know that I'm so screwed up that I would be a horrible parent. So that's a dream that's probably best left alone.

my point with school is that whatever might be required for a job or life in the future is not taught in elementary school or even high school. did you see the quiz are you smarter than a 5 grader? I bet half of the teachers would not pass that. still parents and children are always being scared that thier child will miss and lag and so on. generally it is not a problem however imposing such a pressure on child and medicate him just so he can be part of a system that is not even that useful is beyond me. but i definetely understand the fear of being out of the system and we are clinging to the school system ourselves too.

Last edited by AnotherOne on 30 Mar 2011, 6:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

You're quite mistaken about that. Type II diabetes can be reliably treated with diets sufficiently low in carbohydrates. The only reason people use drugs is because of modern medicine's unsubstantiated bias against such diets, presumably because dietary interventions are a pain for doctors to monitor and don't make drug companies the big bucks. From the patient's point of view, though, a dietary intervention would be superior to drugs.

There's growing evidence that the situation for heart disease is similar.

With respect to psychiatric drugs, the evidence had become fairly conclusive that depression, at least, is often attributable to DHA or general omega 3 essential fatty acid deficiencies, along with receptor competition from excessive omega 6s. Doctors still prefer to prescribe SSRIs rather than provide the appropriate dietary advice, though - despite the fact that some of SSRIs have demonstrated negative side effects, like suicidal tendencies in the case of Paxil.

Drugs generally even less sense in the case of AS and similar ASDs, though, because unlike depression, psychosis, and perhaps ADHD, they aren't pathological states.

The vast majority of plumbers, carpenters and the like that we now have, did not make it through school as they could not sit still, they were taken out of the system and given things to do with their hands instead.

Schools very much expect children to be robots, and that is not who they are. IF they can behave how they want them to behave, great, but I guess what I question is why we have more and more and more children requiring medications than we have ever had before.

I do not dispute that medication has a role, and I also do not want to criticise parents. But many children are placed on drugs at the first opportunity. I am not saying that is what you did, to anyone who has medicated their child. Believe me I know of parents who have fought for years not to medicated, but have, for the school. They believe as we all do that school is essential for children, but we are now expecting children to sit still for longer periods of time than ever before, having less and less free time and less and less time for sport and PE and the like. And when they do do sport at the age of 5, we have them lining up and learning how to play adult sports, that they are not ready for. What happened to letting kids run around and be stupid. Kick balls for fun, etc, etc. When I was in primary (elemtary school) in the late 70's early 80's we had PE twice a week, that was developmentally appropriate and our classroom teacher also took us outside to play games, during class time at least once a day. We also had a moring recess of 30 minutes a lunch recess of 60 minutes and an afternoon recess of 15 minutes. We had monkey bars to play on and sand pits and ovals and basketball courts and the like. Certianly the playground equipment available today is very different as children might get hurt. We also had access to all the PE room supplies at all recesses and I don't know of any school doing that today. When it was raining they used to take the most active of the boys to the gym, so that they could run, as the rest of us could usually be controlled in the classroom without going nuts, for the rest of the day. When it was hot the teachers used to take us outside and sit under a tree and read to us or something similar.

I recognise that times change, but I often wonder if half the problems kids have today are that we do not allow them to be kids, they do not know how to play outside, to make mud pies, climb trees and the like. For kids and adults that are naturally active people they are introduced to sitting still at very early ages, and expected to stay at school for longer and logner periods of time, in terms of years and to do more homework, and they are then introduced to computers and the like.

Why do we need to fix people, instead of simply allowing them to be who they are. I agree that SOME people are very outside the norm, but there are larger and larger numbers of people who are being expected to be this "normal" person, but they cannot even tell us what that is.

There are HUNDREDS of presecriptions written every year for infants under the age of 12 months for antidepressents, not to mention other psychactive drugs. I would love to know HOW a child can be diagnosed as depressed at that young age, and surely a few extra hugs a day would work. There is NO evidence anywhere that depression is some brain disease, that just occurs for the sake of it, that is something the community has come to believe due to drug companies propaganda. One state in Australia actually instituted laws that said that children less than 6 could not be given ritalin or the like, as it was routinely being prescribed to children as young as 2. We also have children as young as 2 being given ECT and the like, and in many cases this is without the parents consent. Proposals to change the law to outlaw it before the age of 12, which are supported by Pediatricians and Child Psychiatrists are likely to not be implemented, because adult psychaitrists are now saying that child psychiatrists cannot possibly decide if ECT is needed in a young child, they do not have enough training in ECT. There are proposals to outlaw psychosurgery in children under the age of 12, yes the good old labotomony still exists, just under a nicer name and according to adult psychiatrists, that breaches the human rights of young children.

Sure I agree there is and always will be a role for medication, I have used medications at times. But to say that they are only used as a last resort and that psychiatric treatments are being ethically used with children (let alone adults) is not something I could agree with. I also have a problem with the fact that the vast majority of these abuses are being done by adult psychiatrists who are not trained in children's developmental needs and the issues such treatments propose for them. A significant percentage of child and adolescent mental health services in Australia do not employ ANY child and adolescent psychiatrists, and I have heard of similar things in other countries. The vast majority of psychiatrists in Australia are adult ones and there are simply not enough trained in child and adolescent psychiatry. So they employ adult ones who are totally ill equipped to handle the issues that children face.

bjcirceleb- You stated,
"There are HUNDREDS of presecriptions written every year for infants under the age of 12 months for antidepressents, not to mention other psychactive drugs."

I have not heard that statistic. Can you please direct me to that source?

Also, "yes the good old labotomony still exists, just under a nicer name" I would like more info on that as well. Thanks!

The non-compliance to dieting is because of the patients not the industry. "It costs more money to diet, and I have to exercise?!" They always go for dieting as an option for people not to far down into diabetes. They usually accompany it with metformin. (metformin; still has no known mechanism of how it works; but this thing is an elixir! So many benefits, and no known side-effects besides feeling nauseous when you first start taking it). Of course, general-rule though, don't take it if you don't need it. Metformin isn't a cure though; just assists in boosting you body's health alongside the diet.

There may be a little noncompliance because of the patients, but the truth is few doctors still suggest the low carb diets that are easy to comply with and actually work for diabetes any more. Instead, they suggest low calorie, low fat diets that are extremely difficult to comply with.

That is the fault of the medical industry, not the patients. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the recommended diet was a balanced diet with significant amounts of fat. In 1980, that changed to recommendations for diets that were primarily carbohydrate based with minimal amounts of fat. Those two recommendations can't both be right, and given that the obesity epidemic started when the recommendations changed, it's clear by now that it's the current "food pyramid" recommendations that are wrong. Yet, the medical industry still sticks by those erroneous recommendations.

And no, they don't have to exercise. I'm talking about diet only interventions that don't require exercise.

Most people with type II diabetes have type II diabetes because of unhealthy eating habits, an unhealthy lifestyle, and a genetic predisposition which manifests under such circumstances. These are usually people who can't eat an average diet and get an average amount of exercise, let alone eat a more healthful than average diet and get an above average amount of exercise.

Most doctors know that patients who come to them in this condition generally aren't going to take much initiative for their health beyond taking a pill or two everyday. My roommate has type II diabetes and despite my guidance (solicited by him), he will still eat four servings of mashed potatoes and half a loaf of bread for a meal, and refuses to do anything remotely active. He doesn't even check his blood sugar regularly. That's his choice, and that's how most people with type II diabetes are.

It is NOT the medical industries fault.

I doubt the rise in type II diabetes and obesity has anything to do with the food pyramid. I doubt most people do anything more with it but occasionally gaze at it on the back of the box of cereal in the morning. The rise in obesity and type II diabetes is most likely due to a collimation of factors. For example, people are significantly more sedentary than they used to be, yet eat significantly more. The size of things like muffins and cookies that can be bought at coffee shops has increased vastly over the years.

Another thing is, most people eat highly processed foods. For example, poptarts, hamburger helper, rice-A-roni, and so on. These are usually calorie dense, sodium dense foods, which have more taste than substance. Foods that taste particularly good, but are not particularly filling leave people feeling short changed, and they usually end up eating more than the serving suggestion. Hamburger Helper is a good example of this.

On a side note, I don't really have anything against preservatives but.....some of them tend to have a rather awful taste. I eat a simply diet...my food is actually what it claims to be, but occasionally I'll eat something that came in a colorful box and has it's own commercial spot on TV, and generally speaking, it doesn't taste like food should taste, in my opinion.

Last edited by Chronos on 31 Mar 2011, 3:40 am, edited 1 time in total.