Children and Adolescents

Increasing numbers of children with sleep disorders are being treated with the hormone melatonin, but the medication has not been approved for such use.

Instead of hope and enthusiasm for their futures, too many children now grow up believing they are inherently defective, and controlled by bad genes and biochemical imbalances. They are shackled by the idea that they have ADHD and then subdued by the drugs that inevitably go along with the diagnosis. Unless something intervenes, many of them will go on to pass their days on Earth in a drug-impaired, demoralized state.

-A psychiatrist discusses working with juvenile delinquents and his shock at discovering how most of the boys "were receiving four, five or even six psychiatric medications."

-Mother Jones looks at drug company promotional efforts, expanded diagnostic criteria, and the appeal of amphetamines to high-performance cultures globally.

The chair of a state Senate committee told a public hearing that California’s foster care system “has grown more addicted to mind-altering medication."

-The Wall Street Journal asks why some 274,000 infants and 370,000 toddlers in the US are taking antianxiety sedatives and antidepressant drugs.

-CTV's W5 news program investigates the possible links some researchers are drawing between relatively common strep throat infections and the causing of neurological or psychiatric problems in children.

-Matt Walsh insists that he's got ADHD as much as anyone has ADHD, and then makes the argument that ADHD doesn't exist.

Common scientific beliefs about serotonin levels in depression and how antidepressants act on the brain appear to be completely backwards.

-Two Canadian psychiatrists argue that the body of scientific evidence about schizophrenia shows that it is not a progressive illness and therefore we should have much higher expectations of full recoveries than we do.

-Dr. Lance Dodes and Dr. Joseph Nowinski debate the disease-based model of addiction and the 12-step approach in The Fix.

There are no proven treatments of any kind for children or adolescents experiencing psychosis or schizophrenia, according to a meta-analysis of randomized comparison trials published in PLOS One.

Just so we are clear, on page 61 of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the "creators" of the diagnosis for ADHD admit there is no test sensitive or specific enough to actually diagnose ADHD. Given that the Drug Company-funded "experts" in charge of writing the ADHD diagnosis for the APA admit there is no test capable of diagnosing ADHD, nor are there any biological markers or brain scans capable of serving as a diagnostic, how can they diagnose 6.5 million kids with ADHD?

-A debate between one of the co-authors of the Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia report, and two authors whose meta-analysis of cognitive behavioral therapy was cited in that report.

For nearly two decades, Big Pharma commercials have falsely told Americans that mental illness is associated with a chemical brain imbalance, but buried SAMHSA survey results tell us that depression and suicidality are associated with poverty, unemployment, and mass incarceration. And these results also point us to the reality that American society has now become so especially oppressive for young people that an embarrassingly large number of American teenagers and young adults are depressed and suicidal.

Robert Whitaker extended one of his core arguments from Anatomy of an Epidemic in a blog post last week. His argument revolves around the claim that psychiatric drugs are the principal cause of increasing psychiatric disability, as measured by U.S. social security disability claims. But does this really explain the rise in recipients of these SSI & SSDI benefits?

-The Wall Street Journal visits the growing practice of stationing mental health professionals in the offices of pediatric physicians.

The Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society published a paper titled Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia. The central theme of the paper is that the condition known as psychosis is better understood as a response to adverse life events rather than as a symptom of neurological pathology. The paper was wide-ranging and insightful and, predictably, drew support from most of us on this side of the issue and criticism from psychiatry.  Section 12 of the paper is headed "Medication" and under the subheading "Key Points" you'll find this quote: "[Antipsychotic] drugs appear to have a general rather than a specific effect: there is little evidence that they are correcting an underlying biochemical abnormality."

Researchers believe they have found "the smoking gun" that links common contaminants leaching from plastics to "adverse brain development and hyperactivity."

-University of Queensland addictions experts challenge last year's Nature editorial that claimed there is a scientific "consensus" that addiction is a brain disease.

Depressed elderly people are more likely to suffer heart disease not because of their depression, but apparently due to antidepressant drugs.

-Psychiatrist Jose Andres Saez Fonseca disposes with the language of the diagnostic manuals, and tries to grapple with different ways of seeing.

First generation antipsychotics seem to cause general brain volume loss, while second generation antipsychotics seem to both increase and decrease the thickness of different parts of the brain.

-Psychiatrists analyze why US bipolar diagnoses in children and adolescents increased 40 times over in less than 10 years.

When I was locked in a psychiatric hospital, I wasn't able to have much of a conversation with my parents about what was going on. Phone calls were tense and filled with silence, and as I stood at the ward payphone I was so confused and frozen in fear that each call just confirmed to them how lost I was. Every day as a patient centered around the various prescriptions I was on, and like so many people suffering in a psychosis, helping me became a wait to "find the right combination of medications."