November 21, 2004

CLOCKWORK KIDS:

The Chill Pill Kids: More and more children, some just five years old, are being prescribed antidepressants. Yet nobody is sure of these drugs’ effects. So why are we using our young people as guinea pigs? (Liam McDougall, 11/21/04, Sunday Herlod)

Last week, two major studies pub lished by researchers from London University found that soaring numbers of children in the UK were being prescribed antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs. The first, published in Archives Of Disease In Childhood, found that the rate doctors were putting young people on antidepressants had jumped by 68% in recent years, rising more quickly than in eight other major countries: France, Germany, Spain, Canada, US, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

A second, in the same publication, focused on the rise in antidepressant prescriptions for children in the UK from 1992 to 2001. During this time, researchers found that almost 25,000 children and adolescents up to the age of 18 were given a total of 93,000 prescriptions. Children as young as five appeared to be among those receiving the drugs. Overall, it found the rate of prescriptions for anti depressants for children rose by 70% in a decade. But while the rate for tricyclics, the older generation of antidepressants, fell by 30%, prescriptions for SSRIs (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors), including Prozac and Seroxat, increased tenfold.

The findings have fuelled fears among Scottish health experts at the increasing “medicalisation” of children’s problems. In September, research by the Scottish Executive revealed that hundreds of Scottish children, some as young as two, had been diagnosed by GPs as suffering from depression last year. Meanwhile, the bill for antidepressants is also soaring, quadrupling to £55 million over the past decade.

Child psychiatrists and GPs are being blamed in large part for the increase of antidepressant use. Although no anti depressants are licensed for use among under-16s, doctors can prescribe them where they feel it is clinically appropriate.

Dr Des Spence, a GP in Glasgow, accuses medical colleagues of having a mindset in which children’s unhappiness is addressed by drugs rather than alternative therapies such as counselling. “There is this idea that life can be broken down into a collection of chemical interactions, but in reality it’s nothing like that,” he says. “It’s very convenient to give someone a tablet and try to cure them. The more their problems are medicalised, the more people will try to treat them with medication. Surely there are better ways to treat children.”

Spence, also the UK spokesman for the No Free Lunch Campaign, a group of healthcare professionals concerned at the undue influence of the pharmaceutical industry on doctors in promoting drug products, believes another reason for the rise is the drugs companies’ successful marketing of their products.

He adds: “ Recently there were figures which showed that 90% of postgraduate education in medicine is funded through the pharmaceutical industry. The people who set the agenda influence what happens.

“Medicalising kids’ problems deflects us from the real question about why they are becoming depressed. There needs to be distance between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals.”

Janice Hill, founder and director of the Overload Network, an Edinburgh-based charity that campaigns on behalf of ADHD sufferers and their parents, warns that children were becoming addicted to antidepressants and had little help to come off them.

She says: “It’s all very well prescribing mind-altering drugs to children but when they want to come off these drugs it’s very hard. There’s no facility for them to do so. There’s also very little safety data on how these drugs will affect children. The norm is to have no hard information on their effects on children.”


Industry always makes a convenient scapegoat, but the truth is that the parents and teachers who deal with kids want to make them easier to control.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 21, 2004 4:23 PM
Comments

You're right , parents and teachers do want kids to be easier to deal with. Parenting and classroom management skills aren't always up to par. But the industry is always quite eager to assist . They all play a role.

Posted by: at November 21, 2004 5:38 PM

Beating them harder would work as well and has fewer side effects.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at November 21, 2004 5:54 PM

Robert,

You are exactly correct. My father didn't spare the belt with me and I turned out more or less a productive member of society.

Posted by: Bart at November 21, 2004 6:48 PM

Bart and Robert are right on point about this. What we are seeing in elementary school now are the children and even grandchildren of those who have been deprived of the benefits of measures such as threats of eternal Hellfire and, of course, flogging. My own elementary school had generous applications of both, and it did much good. We have reached the point now where even harsh reproof is considered unacceptable.

So what are teachers supposed to do? Well, if the dear tyke is enough of an a**h***, he gets a special ed classification, which means "accomodation," a fancy word for "let him do what he wants." Imagine yourself trying to teach 30 first-graders while one of them is flopping around the floor like a fresh-caught tuna fish--you'd be screaming for the meds, for yourself, if not for the kid.

Posted by: Lou Gots at November 21, 2004 8:53 PM

Robert, Bart, Lou:

I don't buy into the notion that indiscriminate beating of kids will improve the situation. However, I was a smart kid who delighted in disruption. The principal of my elementary school had a long wood paddle hung on the wall behind his desk, emblazoned with the motto "Board of Education." I felt the sting of that baby a few times, and it cured me of my bad behavior. I should add that my Mother worked at the school, and approved wholeheartedly.

Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at November 21, 2004 9:52 PM

So, the liberals abort their kids. The frazzled single moms drug theirs. And the concerned parents home-school their five child families.

I wonder who will be leading the next generation...

Posted by: Randall Voth at November 22, 2004 8:08 AM
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