Psychiatric drugs on children was something that came as a big surprise to me when I heard about it first. But the PBS documentary ‘the medicated child’ took me deep into many of the effects of such a treatment as well as the power play between the drug companies, politics, money and profits over health and well being.

I am no authority on medical terms, but as a father and a strong believer that not all use of medical drugs are good for health I fail to understand many things that go into a diagnosis

Many must be familiar with the concept of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder or commonly known as ADHD the diagnosis and treatment of which has remained controversial for a long time.

In 1996 a research lead by a team of Child Psychiatrists in Massachusetts General hospital theorized that some of these ADHD diagnosis could be in reality a Bipolar disorder. This was controversial as Bipolar was often referred to as an adult concern and not even diagnosed among teens.

But the fact that caught my attention was that once this theory was published there has been an increase of Bipolar diagnosis among kids by 4000%. Some of the kids diagnosed with child Bipolar as young as 2 years old

What? 4000%? 2 years?
The moment you hear something new you go and diagnose that left, right and center? Who is the beneficiary here? Are we missing some thing? And this sounds crazy when doctors use the word behavioral modification. Behavioral Modification for a child?

Now the fact that many of these drugs used are not really tested (Not on children

anyway) and one of the doctors suggesting that it is more of a trail and error when using many of these medication and no one knows what will work. This gets more confusing when you hear that kids start with 3 to 4 pills and then grow up to continue to over 16 plus pills a day.

The documentary also traces the life of a kid who at 3 is diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication and then over a 13 year period at the age of 16, he struggles in studies can’t do without medications and not sure what the future holds.

But on a positive note, the family now follows a program to take him off medication and for the they borrow techniques from natural healing methods, yoga and much more. And the program is showing results. And it is common sense that if the result is less then it is because of all the negative effects of taking drugs over so long a time.

Now when I look back I think there were kids in our school and college as well who had problems with learning as well as relating and communicating with others or performing in a group.

Looking further deep, I have a doubt if even I had some of these issues they suggest as symptoms for ADHD. We all know kids who did not have much friends or ones that were always fighting or kids who looked moody and sad. But do not remember any of them put on medication.

If I remember correct every one in my class had one problem or the other, and most had its fixes in the class itself, but life went on. We were kids and not subjects for research and we had an environment where we could be just kids.

What I can’t understand is how can you be bipolar as a small kid when your brain is not even sufficiently developed to be unipolar.

There should be more than just this to diagnosis and I think someone should take a stock of the total money made from drugs on kids and then we will see who has an interest in keeping the children medicated for life

If ADHD was a possible diagnosis in the past some of the people who would have been put on medication and there by changed the very course of history could include Mozart, Andrew Carnegie, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Christopher Columbus, Elvis Presley, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln

Related articles

• Is It Really ADHD? (webmd.com)