Children and Adolescents

"Mixed anxiety-depressive disorder," "attenuated psychosis syndrome," "obsessive-compulsive personality disorder," "antisocial personality disorder," and "nonsuicidal self-injury" were among diagnoses that met with disappointing results in...

“The National Women’s Health Network launched the 'Pass on the Pink Pill – Or Pass Out' campaign, to warn women of the marginal benefits...

This week the drug monitoring and patients' rights website, RxISK, launched the Centre for Medication Withdrawal, a page dedicated to establishing what causes dependence and how to treat it.

Treating attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with stimulants affects growth and is likely to cause a higher BMI in later adolescence, according to research from...

From Greater Good: According to pediatrician Claudia Gould, parents and professionals can better understand children's behavior by paying attention to the meaning behind it. "In a...

In October of 2013, I wrote a blog on the Foundation for Excellence website (‘The Story of My Perfectly Wonderful Children and the Change WE Need to Make in the World to Save Them’) shortly after finding out that my son’s guidance counselor suggested he (then 10) consider ‘distraction meds’ to aid in his school performance. If I could sit every member of this school system down right now and ask them all my most burning questions, they would be: Do you want to be a tool of the system? The one who knows all the rules and holds all the lines? That says 'no, we can't do that', just because that's the way it is? Or do you want to be a guide through all that mess?

I am now haunted by guilt that my daughter never really had a chance for anything like a normal life, because of the choices that were made for her. Choices made with the 'best' medical advice of the day, which I had never quite accepted as correct, but in the end largely complied with for lack of any clear alternative.

“We are consistently seeing sensory, motor, and cognitive issues pop up more and more in later childhood, partly because of inadequate opportunities to move and play at an early age,” writes Angela Hanscom in The Washington Post.

Scientific evidence indicates that antidepressants do not help children. In light of such high risks to the child’s wellbeing, these psychiatric chemicals are clearly doing more harm than good. What kind of society would permit this assault on its children?

Swedish study suggests experiencing adversity in childhood is linked to dying by suicide as an adolescent or young adult.

Data drawn from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project show that children raised in institutions in Romania exhibit elevated symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, depression, and...

Research on neurochemicals associated with moods in mice and rats finds that, while less depression-like behavior was observed in those receiving fluoxetine (Prozac) administration...

The largest-ever meta-analysis of antidepressant trials appeared yesterday in the British Medical Journal. Researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed 70 trials (involving 18,526 subjects), to find that - counter to the initially-reported findings - antidepressants doubled the risk of suicide and aggression in subjects under 18. This risk had been misrepresented in the original study reports, the authors say, and suggest that the risks to adults may be similarly under-reported.

The winding path is very often the only path that a human being can follow. It has to become an acceptable path. We have to stop pushing young kids because WE want them to be somewhere without regard to what they are ready for.

Researchers from the University of Toronto departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, publishing in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, propose that various forms of stress,...

The type of diagnostic assessment used in research settings, either fully structured or semi-structured interview, may affect which participants in receive a diagnosis of major depression.

From The New York Times: Tech companies are increasingly recruiting school teachers to help improve and promote their education tools in exchange for perks, including...

-Nearly one in five families in New South Wales, Australia admitted that they give tranquilizing drugs to their children during long road trips.

Robert Whitaker appears on Science for the Public on March 20, 2013, speaking about how the ADHD is diagnosed and why users of medications...

Study uncovers teachers’ attitudes surrounding ADHD medication use and examines the influence of race and social class on teacher beliefs.

On his website, Dr. Nardo details the hidden risks and bad science behind the growing practice of using atypical antipsychotics to augment antidepressant treatment for severe depression. The story of Atypical Antipsychotic Augmentation of Treatment Resistant Depression is a “prime example” “to illustrate how commercial interests have invaded medical practice.” “Besides the obvious dangers of the Metabolic Syndrome and Tardive Dyskinesia, these drugs don’t really do what they’re advertised to do – make the antidepressants work a lot better.”

Researchers report that dangerous side effects are not being adequately reported in the trials of ketamine for depression.

Huffington Post and journalist Steve Brill have combined to launch a 15 part series about how Johnson & Johnson illegally violated FDA restrictions by pushing the antipsychotic drug, Risperdal, for use with adolescents and the elderly. The series, entitled “America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker,” launched yesterday and will include mixed media, videos, podcasts, source documents, as well as 15 written chapters. Click more for a synopsis of part 1.

The recent incident in the grounds of Washington Capitol, involving a young educated woman, brought shock to many people. It was another opportunity to blame a victim of mental illness and demand further restraint and medical attention for such individuals. Yes, we are lacking dignified, caring, discerning and attentive treatment for those whose spirits are broken. But we certainly don’t suffer from a lack of medical treatment for such individuals. It is time for policy-holders, and our scientific community to ask the 'heretical' question; “Could the drugs be the culprit behind the violence?”

Americans today, especially teens, are reporting having far more psychological problems that resemble "depressive symptoms" than they did in the 1980s, according to an...