PARENT RESOURCES

Mad in America is a webzine devoted to rethinking psychiatry’s current “disease model” for diagnosing and treating psychiatric disorders. This Parent Resources section is designed to provide information and resources for parents who wish to explore alternatives to conventional, drug-based psychiatric care for children and youth.

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Support Group: Moderated online meeting every month. (Coming soon.)

Question of the week: My son’s father wants him to stop taking his meds. What should we do?

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Drug Info

Did you know:

That longer-term studies of ADHD have found worse outcomes for the medicated youth?
In a large NIMH study, researchers concluded that few youth “benefit long-term” from antipsychotics.
That marijuana, stimulants, and antidepressants increase the risk that a youth will be diagnosed with bipolar disorder?

Research on psychotropic use in children and adolescents

Stimulants and ADHD
Antidepressants for mood disorders (coming soon)
Antipsychotics for psychotic disorders (coming soon)
Mood stabilizers for juvenile bipolar disorder (coming soon):

Featured Resources

Helping Children With Angry Outbursts

Ben Furman, MD - October 3, 2018

Finnish psychiatrist Ben Furman reviews various non-drug therapies for children with aggressive outbursts of anger, including the Kids' Skills approach that he and social psychologist Tapani Ahola developed. These approaches focus on helping children come up with their own ideas for overcoming their problems with the help of family and friends.

New Video Series: ‘Parenting Today’

Eric Maisel, PhD - September 30, 2018

This series of thirty video interviews with leading experts from around the world is designed to help parents better understand how to raise strong, resilient kids and how to deal with the pressures exerted on them by the current dominant “mental disorder” paradigm. We hope that this interview series will provide helpful ideas that you may not be able to get anywhere else.

The Concerned Parents’ Project: 31 Questions

Eric Maisel, PhD - March 31, 2018

The Concerned Parents’ Project grew out of the idea that there may be parents out there who are confused and bewildered by the mixed messages on what it is to have normal and healthy childhood experiences. We posted a new question and answer for parents each day in March.

Webinars

Antidepressants in Pregnancy

In this webinar, Dr. Adam Urato, a practicing OB-GYN, reviews the risks of SSRI use during pregnancy. He details the role that serotonin plays in normal fetal development, and reviews the extensive literature, from both animal studies and human studies, that warns of potential harm to the fetus and newborn child from exposure to a drug that disrupts normal serotonin function. Dr. Urato also discusses the financial conflicts of interest that have led to a societal failure to warn pregnant women of this risk.

Blogs

Childhood Bipolar Disorder, Deconstructed

Eric Maisel, PhD - December 12, 2018

Diagnosing children with juvenile or pediatric bipolar disorder is largely an American phenomenon. Do we actually have more “bipolar” children in the United States—or are we simply labeling more of them as such? If it is ever fair to call a child “manic,” isn’t the child’s environment the direction in which we should look?

Why My Daughter Died and I Lived

George Ochoa - December 6, 2018

To be a parent of a suicidal child is to be in a terrible position, where you hold in your hands the life most valuable to you and know that any slip of your hands may end that life. In the 1970s, my suicidality was treated nonmedically and I lived. In the 2000s, my daughter Martha’s suicidality was treated medically and she died.

children of parents with mental health labels

Invisible Trauma: The Children Left Behind When Parents Are Hospitalized

Cheri Bragg - November 25, 2018

It would take decades before I recognized the trauma caused by repeatedly being separated from my mom when she was hospitalized. I grieved almost exactly the way children did who had lost a parent to death. Yet it was grief without closure because my mom was not dead, just... gone.

The Real Attention Deficit Disorder

Megan Wildhood - November 24, 2018

The fact that we shame people for acting like they need attention (and for actually needing attention) is self-defeating and maddening, not to mention absurd. Living in a society that punishes people for having fundamental needs like attention is probably one of the reasons people have developed behaviors “just” to “get attention.”