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Sunday, December 15, 2013

Off-Label Use Of Anti-Psychotic Medications For Behavior Problems in Children

While I don't buy the "psychiatric drugs cause violent kids" stuff that floats around the Internet, what this article from December 2013 Consumer Reports is concerned about is also the concern of some mental health professionals that I know: inappropriate uses of antipsychotic medications in kids to deal with behavior problems:
So, what’s behind the antipsychotic boom? Our investigation, based on an analysis by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, uncovered several factors, including overly aggressive drug marketing and a lack of access to quality mental health care. Caught in the middle are families who often have insufficient resources to deal with complex emotional, psychological, and behavioral problems.

 “There’s a societal trend to look for the quick fix, the magic bullet that will correct disruptive behaviors,” David Rubin, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said. “But for those looking for a quick solution to escalating behaviors at home, the hard truth is there is unlikely to be a quick fix.”
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4 comments:

  1. FidelDecember 16, 2013 at 6:13 AM

    Try and get approval for a decent study on psychotropic meds in a pediatric population.....

    And prepare for disappointment.

    ReplyDelete
  2. John CunninghamDecember 16, 2013 at 2:06 PM

    there is a fair amount of info suggesting that American kids, esp. boys, are being grossly overmedicated. In the US, about 9%of kids get meds daily. in France, it is 0.5%. check out
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/suffer-the-children/201203/why-french-kids-dont-have-adhd
    and
    http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3300515
    where Denninger points out that a handful of kids becoming homicidal maniacs is a likely consequence of mass medication.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Clayton CramerDecember 16, 2013 at 3:09 PM

    Although France has an astonishing number of these crazy mass murders, too, suggesting that the linkage between overmedication and mass murder does not provide much of an explanation.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Windy WilsonDecember 23, 2013 at 6:12 PM

    But do they use guns to commit the mass murders in France? Dead with a gun is a whole different idea of dead.
    [/leftist idiocy]

    ReplyDelete