the tragedy of sick children
This story is from the New York Times. Unfortunately, it’s likely that cases like this are going to get more common before we as a culture wake up and realize what we are doing to our children. My heart goes out to these parents.
Early on the morning of Dec. 13, police officers responding to a 911 call arrived at a house in Hull, Mass., a seaside town near Boston, and found a 4-year-old girl on the floor of her parents’ bedroom, dead.
She was lying on her side, in a pink diaper, the police said, sprawled across some discarded magazines and a stuffed brown bear.
Last week, prosecutors in Plymouth County charged the parents, Michael and Carolyn Riley, with deliberately poisoning their daughter Rebecca by giving her overdoses of prescription drugs to sedate her.
The police said the girl had been taking a potent cocktail of psychiatric drugs since age 2, when she was given a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder and bipolar disorder, which is characterized by mood swings. …
Indeed, the practice of aggressive drug treatment for young children labeled bipolar has become common across the country. In just the last decade, the rate of bipolar diagnosis in children under 13 has increased almost sevenfold, according to a study based on hospital discharge records. And a typical treatment includes multiple medications.
Rebecca was taking Seroquel, an antipsychotic drug; Depakote, an equally powerful mood medication; and Clonidine, a blood pressure drug often prescribed to calm children.
The rising rates of diagnosis and medication use strike some doctors and advocates for patients as a dangerous fad that exposes ever-younger children to powerful drugs.
It’s also the only way the medical establishment knows how to “fix” the startling numbers of children suffering from the highest rates of chronic disease ever measured, including mental disorders. This phenomena is not at all unrelated to the skyrocketing rates of autism, ADHD, diabetes, cancer, learning disabilities, asthma, bowel disorders and eczema.
Some child psychiatrists say bipolar disorder has become an all-purpose label for aggression.
“Bipolar is absolutely being overdiagnosed in children, and the major downside is that people then think they have a solution and are not amenable to listening to alternatives,” which may not include drugs, said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Stony Brook University School of Medicine on Long Island.
Paraphrasing H. L. Mencken, Dr. Carlson added, “Every serious problem has an easy solution that is usually wrong.”
And where is all of this aggression coming from? If you really want to read a book that will open your eyes, try this one: Vaccination, Social Violence, and Criminality: The Medical Assault on the American Brain.
Defense lawyers are also focusing on the question of medication. “What I want to know,” said John Darrell, a lawyer for Mr. Riley, “is how in the world you diagnose a 2-year-old and give her these strong medicines that are not approved for children.” …
[Dr. Carlson:] “To me one of the miracle of children’s brains is that we don’t see more harm from these treatments.”
Related posts:
Our childrens’ precious brains
The “stuck on sick” generation
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