Posts Tagged ‘ psychiatric drugs ’

Forced Drugging of Kids Needs to Stop

June 23rd, 2011. By

 

Sometimes a child’s voice can be the voice of sanity and the impetus for change in the fight against a seemingly overwhelming foe. In this case, the foe is the mandated psychiatric drugging of our children with any of a number of drugs—Ritalin, Adderall, Risperdal to name a few. And the child, is a high school senior whose comment I came across on the Ablechild.org Facebook page.

The young man’s comment said that he has a nephew who is being forced to take medication—and that his nephew’s mother runs the risk of getting “screwed” should she not give the child the meds. He goes on to mention a friend who’s been on Ritalin his whole life and is “following a pathway to drug addiction and it is happening before my eyes.”

Given the recent study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry showing that childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) increases the risk that a child will smoke cigarettes or abuse drugs or alcohol in early adulthood, and that intervention with stimulant drugs was not found to conclusively alter or reduce that risk, either this kid has done his homework and/or he’s seeing a medical experiment play out in front of his very eyes.

Regardless, the comment he made that really caught my eye and stuck with me the most was this: “I wanna do something to stop this but I don’t know where to start I’m just a senior in high school.”

Just a senior in high school.

As someone who’s now well beyond high school and a parent to three, it’s a heart-wrenching plea to hear from someone so young, and clearly not so naive. Heart-wrenching because it’s compounded by the advice of the Ablechild.org FB page moderator to take advantage of the Hatch Amendment and the Medwatch form for reporting any adverse drug reactions to the FDA. Yes, a parent should be aware of both and should utilize both (along with pushing to be an active participant in any Section 504 considerations for their child)—but it’s not enough.

What if the “adverse reaction” is more than a low-grade fever. What if it’s sudden death—as was allegedly the case with 14-year-old Matthew Hohmann in 2004? As reported at the time at abcnews.go.com, his parents are convinced that Matthew’s Adderall XR is responsible for his death. And what of the FDA’s Medwatch reporting system then? No, what you need then is an attorney.

What if it’s Maryanne Godboldo of Michigan who’s fighting for her custody of her daughter following a drawn out battle with CPS (Child Protection Services) over her stopping her daughter’s use of the psychotropic drug, Risperdal?

And see, Godboldo’s story didn’t start there—it started when she and her daughter wanted to enter the public school system after several years of homeschooling—and the school required immunizations. Godboldo noticed uncharacteristic behavioral changes in her daughter within two weeks of the immunizations. And she began—as any responsible parent would—to try to seek help for her child.

Her suspicion that the immunizations might be the cause of the behavioral change was dismissed, and doctors prescribed psychotropic drug therapy for her daughter, which Godboldo later discontinued. The result? Health care providers claiming Godboldo medically abused her daughter, and CPS stepping in to remove the child from the home.

Godboldo is now facing criminal charges for allegedly firing a gun shot at police when they came to take her daughter away. If indeed she did take aim, who as a parent among us can not sense her frustration, her desperation and her lack of any other recourse to have her voice heard?

Ditto Jim Kaiser, who actually felt he had no other option than to kidnap his own son a few years back in order to keep his child from being forced to take Adderall (see video above). What you don’t see in the video report on Kaiser is what he shares on his website, MyNameisBen.org, where he shares that his child’s mother has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and he also shares “words that she personally wrote” in her journal about her feelings and her ability (or lack thereof) to take care of her son. Reading this, if indeed true, provides a bit of backstory to Kaiser’s fight for his son and, as with Godboldo above, would make any parent understand what drove him to kidnap his own child to save him from being drugged.

And, with the statistics for ADHD diagnosis on the rise—according to the CDC (cdc.gov), parent-reported ADHD diagnosis rose twenty-two per cent between 2003 and 2007—this is not an issue that’s going away any time soon.

The problem with the lame “follow the process” process to documenting a child’s diagnosis (or misdiagnosis, as with ADHD can be the case) and treatment is that, as a parent, there is no real recourse as Godboldo and Kaiser have found out. Following the rules and trying to do the right thing nets nothing except an up-to-date file in some school office somewhere. And it nets a young man—truly no longer a child, though legally so—reaching out on a Facebook page in a plea for help and a desire for action, somehow, some way.

My advice to this young man is this: Continue to question. Continue to vocalize. Continue to fight. You will be heard. File the reports and the paperwork to CYA (cover your a**)—or advocate for those you love to do so. Follow the “drugging our kids” stories that are garnishing national attention, and don’t be afraid to speak with an attorney who specializes in civil rights—or, though I hope it doesn’t come to this as it would mean injury is involved, pharmaceutical litigation or medical malpractice (lest we forget little Rebecca Riley).

And for the rest of us, it’s time to take note of this young man’s plea and do something.

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Posted in Drugs/Medical | 2 Comments »

Generation of Kids Hooked on Psych Drugs

June 23rd, 2009. By

Campbell Brown anchors a daily prime-time news program on CNN. On June 17, 2009, in a segment of the program called the “Great Debate,” the question was, Ritalin, Prozac, Adderall, are we “pushing pills on our kids and raising a generation hooked on meds.”

Featured in the debate were, Kelly O’Meara, author of the book, “Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill,” and Dr Charles Sophy, a psychiatrist in private practice in Los Angeles, who serves as medical director of the LA County Department of Children and Family Services. They were each given 30 seconds for an opening statement.

“It’s a two-part problem,” O’Meara explained.

“It’s the diagnosis itself that’s not based in science or medicine,” she pointed out. “There is no objective test that you can give children or adults to prove that you actually have some sort of psychiatric abnormality.”

“And the second part, of course, is the drugging,” she said, “the prescription drugs that are doled out to treat these so-called disorders.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Emerging Issues | 4 Comments »

Throwing Billions Down a Psych Drug Rat Hole

May 18th, 2009. By

From 1996 to 2006, prescriptions for psychiatric drugs increased by 73% among adults and 50% with children in the US, according to a new study in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal “Health Affairs.”


Another study in the same issue, found spending for mental health care grew more than 30% over the same 10-year period, with almost all of the increase due to psychiatric drug costs.


On April 22, 2009, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, reported that in 2006, more money was spent on treating mental disorders in children aged 0 to 17 than for any other medical condition, with a total of $8.9 billion.


By comparison, the cost of treating trauma-related disorders, including fractures, sprains, burns, and other physical injuries from accidents or violence was only $6.1 billion. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Emerging Issues | No Comments »

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