Pill-popping and children

Is your child over-active, tears through the house driving you crazy? Just pop a Dexedrine into his mouth. Does he wet the bed at night, give him a Tofranil. Do you suspect your child of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? Just pop a Ritalin in his mouth. But the best is Prozac, Zoloft, or Paxil for all types of depression and several anxiety disorders. Over 133,400,000 prescriptions for all ages of the above drugs were issued in 1999.

All over America children from toddler to teen who seem to act up are quickly pacified with one of many different drugs. The tragedy is that the side effects of most of these drugs are not really understood. As a result the psychiatric medication of children is dangerously haphazard.

Recently researchers revealed in “The Journal of the American Medical Association” that the number of 2-to-4-year-old children on Ritalin, antidepressants, and other psychiatric drugs increased dramatically from 1991 through 1995. The most startling about this fact is that these drugs are largely untested for use in the young.

U.S. News & World Report March 6, 2000, reports that according to the U.S. Surgeon General almost 21 percent of children age 9 and up have a mental disorder, including depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and bipolar disorder. But the danger lies in that most family physicians and pediatricians do not sufficiently understand the nature of the drugs they are prescribing because they lack the skill and time to understand their side effects.

The magazine article further states that “psychiatric drugs can help youngsters, but they have not been tested even in older children, and most are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for pediatric use. Almost nothing is known about how antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs affect a child’s developing brain.” Simply popping a pill into a child’s mouth without a proper diagnosis, behavior modifications, counseling, and long-term follow-up that are vital can result in serious long-range problems.

Prozac, one of the most popular drugs used for depression, is not FDA approved for children under 18. Ritalin, another very popular anti-depressant drug, is not approved for children under 6, yet doctors can still legally prescribe those drugs for children and frequently do, for whatever therapeutic use they decide is appropriate.

Hopefully no parents in the CNMI are resorting to such drastic techniques to calm their child. The article offers two queries to ask the doctor or the therapist before a parent agrees to drug his child:

A. How will you make a diagnosis? At a minimum, the provider should interview you at least an hour about the child’s medical and family history, observe the child for a similar amount of time, and talk to teachers or baby sitters.

B. If medication is called for, how long should my child take it to know if it works? Since psychotropic medications are untested on children, it will be a process of trial and error. If a drug causes any troubling side effect, talk to your doctor immediately about stopping it.

Miracle drugs are offering millions of people who suffer from various mental disorders the possibility of a real life. But in placing too much faith in a pill, we tend to ignore other key factors in life which may be the source of the mental illness. We must consider family, environment and culture also. Unless the source is understood the drug is only a temporary high. Popping pills into children’s mouths is like playing Russian roulette–the bullet may be in the next chamber. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned remedy: loads of “tender love and care?”