He reports that the same thing is happening to children labeled with ADHD. "Not all children find stimulants suitable," he advises, "and just as with the SSRIs and bipolar disorder it has become very convenient to say that the stimulants weren't causing the problem the child was experiencing; the child in fact had a different disorder and if we could just get the diagnosis correct, then everything else would fall into place."
A report titled, "Adverse Events Associated with Drug Treatment of ADHD: Review of Postmarketing Safety Data," presented at the FDA's March 22, 2006, Pediatric Advisory Committee meeting bears witness to Healy's explanation by stating in part: "The most important finding of this review is that signs and symptoms of psychosis or mania, particularly hallucinations, can occur in some patients with no identifiable risk factors, at usual doses of any of the drugs currently used to treat ADHD."
Between January 2000, and June 30, 2005, the FDA identified nearly 1,000 cases of psychosis or mania linked to the drugs in its own database and those from the drug makers themselves.
The
antipsychotics are just as dangerous as the SSRI antidepressants,
Healy says. "Long before the antidepressants were linked with
akathisia, the antipsychotics were universally recognized as causing
this problem," he explains in the Lane interview. "It was
also universally accepted that the akathisia they induce risked
precipitating the patient into suicidality or violence."
"In addition," he points out, "these drugs are known to cause a range of neurological syndromes, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, and other problems."
"It's hard to understand how blind clinicians can get to problems like these, especially in youngsters who grow obese and become diabetic right before their eyes," Healy tells Lane.
As for what he calls the "medicalization of childhood," in the radio interview, Healy points out that "children always have been unhappy, they always have been nervous, but that's actually part and parcel of being a child."
"You have to go through these things," he said. "This is how we learn to cope with the problems of life."
Children can best be helped in the safest way, he says, "if they're just seen and if they actually have the opportunity to talk about their problems, and if they get basic and sensible input about how to perhaps help them cope with these problems."
Healy said it's important to remember that severe mental illness is rare in children and that most children with a mental health problem do not need medication. Children are being picked up and put on pills "who really don't need to be on these pills and who are going to be injured by them," he warned.
"I think possibly 10 to 15 years up the road," he told Shields, "we're going to be looking at a generation of children who will have been seriously injured by the treatments that they appear ever-increasingly likely to be put on now."
But the administration of multiple drugs at once complicates the situation so that it may be impossible to determine which drugs are most responsible for the adverse reactions children experience, according to Dr Breggin.
"Because so many doctors and so many drug companies will share the blame for mistreating these children, they will be unable to seek redress against individual perpetrators through the courts when they grow up," he explains.
(Evelyn Pringle is an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America)
(This report is one of a series of articles focused on the rising rates of psychiatric drugging in the US and is sponsored by the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology)
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