Brave New World

[wabmester]

Interesting article in the NY Times today:

Checklist for Camp: Bug Spray. Sunscreen. Pills.

The breakfast buffet at Camp Echo starts at a picnic table covered in gingham-patterned oil cloth. Here, children jostle for their morning medications: Zoloft for depression, Abilify for bipolar disorder, Guanfacine for twitchy eyes and a host of medications for attention deficit disorder.

This trend disturbs me -- I'm reminded of Huxley's Brave New World in which everybody is always medicated.   Where is this coming from?   What will these kids be like as adults?

 

[Mwsinron]

Modern medicine has progressed and instead of slapping people into mental wards they actually try and treat them. I know someone who went 35 years before finally being diagnosed with Bi-polar. The medicine he takes made a world of difference for him.

 

[wabmester]

IIRC, the article stated that something like 40% of kids are now medicated.  Where did they hide all these kids when I was in school?   Sure, some kids had quirks, but that's what made school so interesting.

Come to think of it, all the kids were medicated when I went to school, but they didn't get their drugs from their parents. 

 

[Mwsinron]

Ya, I get what your saying. I wished they would have had Allegra when I was a kid. Man that stuff is fantastic.

 

[d]

somewhere along the line we (as a society at large) seemed to have erroneously concluded that:
1) the human condition should suffer no discomfort whatsoever (no matter how insignificant it might be)
2) there are no side effects to medications (other than those we treat with other medications)

 

[Martha]

I have been reading some about mental illness lately. Practicioners are learning that many major mental illnesses begin in early childhood. A psychologist friend of mine recently told me that borderline personal disorder, a very serious mental illness that is not to be diagnosed until adulthood, should be apparent from the time a child is one year old. Children rarely were treated for mental illness in the past. This may have lead to more serious illness when they became adults.

However, research on drugs to treat serious mental illness is rarely done on children as there are issues concerning consent. As a result, there is a lot of experimentation going on just by virtue of treating kids without researching on children first.

I have done some work with runaways. Even though I am not in any way a mental health professional, it sure was apparent that a good number of the kids I dealt with were mentally ill. Resulting from what (chemical imbalance? bad home? bad experiences after leaving home? ) I don't know.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

A minor observation in my rather brief time as a parent.

I think a fair bit of it is giving the kids too much sugar and not enough parenting.

When I see a kid at the park or the mall thats screaming, yelling, running around and whacking other kids I see the same pattern. Their parents all have a huge bottle of some juice or sugar water concoction that they're drinking out of while the calm kids are drinking water.

And when the wild childs do something inappropriate, the parents are either on the other side of the park reading and not paying attention, or in the sing-song voice do the "oh little johnny, thats not very nice now little boo boo lets go over here".

I see it in my kid when I give him too much fruit or a big bottle of juice or a couple of cookies. He turns from his normally pretty calm quiet self into a wild baby, screaming and running around.

And when he does something wrong, like hitting the dogs or throwing stuff or pinching his momma (his latest trick when he's not getting what he wants), he gets a stern bark from me and after a few seconds of looking pouty he's back to his routine and behaves better.

Bottom line? You fill a kid with liquid energy and dont manage their behavior, you get a crazy kid. :

 

[Mwsinron]

I think alot of it boils down too that modern medicine is finally able to understand some conditions of the mind. Its a stigma in this society to take medication for mental illness. While its fine and dandy to take pills if you have a physical ailment. I feel alot of this is simply ignorance.

 

[wabmester]

I think alot of it boils down too that modern medicine is finally able to understand some conditions of the mind.

There's no question that we have a better understanding, but it's still very incomplete and these meds are often brute-force.

For example, it's pretty well established that the neurotransmitter serotonin makes us feel good (check out the thread on magic mushrooms, for example). So, does this mean that we should all boost our serotonin levels via drug therapy? I haven't read Huxley's book since high school, but I think his premise was basically that governments and corporations would dig it if we all were happy and productive all the time.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

drugs can be great when there is no other course of action. but they can also make us lazy. personal experience suggests to me that often they are not needed even when the so-called experts try to get you to pop a pill.

at a relatively early age, my greatgrandmother killed herself. so did my grandmother. my mother used drugs (under psychiatric direction) from very early in life but later managed to control for a majority of the time how she experienced life and only used drugs during very stressful times.

i was diagnosed manic depressive at an early age and they tried to drug me but i refused and instead learned how my own thinking can create balance in the mind more substantial & permanent than any effect a drug might induce.

i have learned a lot more about myself through some struggles over the years than a quick fix ever would have allowed.

we pretty much have all the chemicals in us to create whatever altered state or mental balance we seek. often, it is just a matter of learning how to access your inner pharmacist.

 

[Arif]

When I see a kid at the park or the mall thats screaming, yelling, running around and whacking other kids I see the same pattern. Their parents all have a huge bottle of some juice or sugar water concoction that they're drinking out of while the calm kids are drinking water.

I think kids already have a lot of energy. Then you throw in drinks that the second ingredient is sugar (the first being syrup) and you have a child that simply can't control themselves. My son usually asks for water before he would ask for sugary drinks. His grandmother likes making natural fruit drinks from pinnaple, papaya, banana, etc so he eats and drinks pretty healthy. When he does sneak in chocolate you can definately tell the difference. I really have to get on him when he is juiced up so we limit the amount of sweets he has to special occassions like birthdays or a snack once a week.

 

[Martha]

The article did say that most of the drugs dispensed were for allergies and asthma.  Asthma is on the increase. 

From 1980 to 1996, asthma prevalence among children increased by an average of 4.3% per year, from 3.6% to 6.2%. Low-income populations, minorities, and children living in inner cities experience disproportionately higher morbidity and mortality due to asthma.

http://www.cdc.gov/asthma/children.htm