Children and ADD or ADHD & "other"

[areyouthere]

This phenomenon of prescribing drugs and its potential consequences is long, long from being over.

 

The number of kids on medication for ADD or ADHD is amazingly common and , if anything, is becoming more frequent.

 

Strattera and Adderall being the most commonly prescribed from what I can tell.

 

One day I will be able to post my personal incidental, observations and experiences about this. But for now just wanted to throw it out there for discussion. And I'm curious...... what are the long term effects of being on this particular class of drugs? Are there studies out there that are just coming to the surface regarding it?

 

It is frightening to think of the guilt a parent might feel if they have been lied to and are "poisoning" their own child without knowing it.

 

I will just listen here.

[Rhiannon]

Dr. Peter Breggin has written extensively about ADD drugs and how they work and what they do.

 

There's a chapter on these drugs in Anatomy of an Epidemic (Robert Whitaker) and they're discussed on the Mad In America blog as well, I believe.

 

But I've found Breggin's references to be the most extensive and authoritative and that's where I would start. He seems to really know these drugs inside and out, both from familiarity with the research and from personal experience with many patients. When you learn more about them it's chilling.

 

But then I tend to get quite emotional about ANY psych drugs being given to children. It's unbelievable to me, given how much we know about the chemistry of the brain, about neuroplasticity, and about the vulnerability of the brain to harm from ANY drugs given during development. The same people who would never consider giving a child cocaine or marijuana because it might hurt their brains don't think twice about giving them incredibly potent antipsychotics that have much stronger effects than any "recreational" drug known to man.

[bruno2016]

there is a lot of info out there regarding the use of these drugs in children. A psychologist pointed out that in his observation, many of these kids on these drugs would end up bipolar later on.

 

There is a documentary about children and drugs you can watch on youtube called "the medicated child" or something like this, and shows the life of these poor kids on powerful drugs like antipsychotics. One of the doctors who "treats" these children is Dr. Chang and he is doing something very controversial of not criminal; he is medicating children with bipolar (antipsychotics) meds before they are labeled bipolar. Yes thats right. Its almost like starting chemo before cancer. He claims that ADHD symptoms in a child are early signs of bipolar and so he believes in treating them before its gets worse or whatever. Its almost like he thinks these drugs are fixing something. What an idiot.

 

You can see in the film these kids eating sweets, junk food, etc. Do you think that these doctors ever thought to do a lifestyle change, including eliminating junk food, and seeing if the ADHD symptoms get better? What about trying supplments or looking for root causes like heavy metals? Nope. Just drug them up.

[Barbarannamated]

I get so emotional about this, too, to the point I've had to distance from a few friends whose teenagers are on "cocktails" for combative type behavior. I dont know if they took stimulants for ADHD at younger age, but I noticed that trend starting almost 20 years ago - ADHD kids becoming bipolar teens and adults.

 

On a tangent, I have a few friends whose daughters have had multiple concussions while playing socceer, diagnosed with encephalopathy, and they're destroyed because the kids (and parents) are upset that their sport life may be interrupted. That renders me speechless. I wasnt a jock, but can't imagine how a sport could rank higher than a kid's future neuropsychiatric health. Boggles my mind.