Child’s Ordeal Shows Risks of Psychosis Drugs for Young

[groovedaddy]

OPELOUSAS, La. — At 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’s severe temper tantrums.

Thus began a troubled toddler’s journey from one doctor to another, from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs. Autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder. The boy’s daily pill regimen multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and one for attention-deficit disorder. All by the time he was 3.

He was sedated, drooling and overweight from the side effects of the antipsychotic medicine. Although his mother, Brandy Warren, had been at her “wit’s end” when she resorted to the drug treatment, she began to worry about Kyle’s altered personality. “All I had was a medicated little boy,” Ms. Warren said. “I didn’t have my son. It’s like, you’d look into his eyes and you would just see just blankness.”

Today, 6-year-old Kyle is in his fourth week of first grade, scoring high marks on his first tests. He is rambunctious and much thinner. Weaned off the drugs through a program affiliated with Tulane University that is aimed at helping low-income families whose children have mental health problems, Kyle now laughs easily and teases his family.

Ms. Warren and Kyle’s new doctors point to his remarkable progress — and a more common diagnosis for children of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder — as proof that he should have never been prescribed such powerful drugs in the first place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html?th&emc=th

[Donnachaidh]

1. giving an anti-psychotic at 18 MONTHS??????

That pediatrician should be publicly horse-whipped. :grr:

[TalkingDog]

4. +1000

the other 999 are for all the other over-medicating, just to shut you up, doctors out there.

[Recursion]

5. Are anti-psychotics contraindicated for 18-month-olds?

I honestly have no idea, and I don't have a Merck manual handy.

[Divernan]

2. Too many MDs rely on Big Pharma salespeople to choose Rx.

One friend got one of those hospital based infections when she was in for surgery and for 2 months was prescribed 2 drugs which had already been recognized to be ineffective. Plus her doctor gave her a test which told her she was still sick and needed to continue said drugs. In desperation she went to another doctor who knew these drugs were useless for her, PLUS he told her that once anyone was infected with said "bug" they would test positive for one year after they were cured. He told her the doctors had to rely on diagnosing based on her symptoms, not that lab test.

Of course the prescriptions and the lab test were nice and expensive.

Too many doctors are not keeping up with current knowledge re the diseases they're treating.

There's a pediatrician in a neighboring community who put many, many of his patients on human growth hormone treatment for YEARS. Now these kids are in their early 20's. Mom is 5'4"; Dad is 5'7" - but both boys are 6 feet 4 inches!

And those weekly injections cost their parents over $1,000 per month per kid.

And while drug companies may not pay off such docs directly, they do treat them to "seminars" at exotic places like Hawaii, or Europe - plus monthly dinners at the most expensive restaurants in town.

[HuckleB]

3. We may not know the full story, but it's hard to conceive of a justification for such treatment.

[Better Today]

6. Seems that if the parents were a tad smarter, they would've said "NO"

to using drugs to raise their kids in the first place. ... The child's ordeal, my ass, this all started because parents would rather medicate than learn quality parenting and that exists because we live in a society where both parents have to work at least one job to stay afloat. This has little or nothing to do with the child, he didn't even know he was an ordeal until his parents decided he was, it was the parent's ordeal that this child suffered, not his own.

[K8-EEE]

9. I understand the mom because

I was under such pressure to do the drugs for my kid and I didn't -- but I was older (30's) and maybe not as easily pushed around as a younger or less experienced mom. I definitely felt the pressure. When your child has problems (mine was severely autistic as a toddler, now somewhat less so) and is not thriving like other kids, you feel unqualified. You are told you need "a team of experts" and you often feel at your wits' end. So having seen what severe tantrums can look like I kind of empathize with the parents. You think "I don't know what to do -- these doctors know what to do."

[Better Today]

10. Perhaps you are different than she, but the idea it is age related is bogus.

My children were both handfuls, and I never "obeyed" a doctor about them, not even as a young mother. But, having been born dead, having open heart surgery at age 4, and then being in a doctors' care for most of my life, till I just decided I couldn't stand them anymore and 50-60% are quacks just trying to get rich. . . well perhaps my youth was a little better seasoned than yours.

Edited to add: Also at the time of my childrens' early years I was a stay at home Mom, unlike most folks, so I had time to educate myself to alternatives, and I had the day-long control to make sure correct disciplines, therapies, whatever you want to call it, were exercised all day rather than going to a daycare where you have no control, (and I find listening to others, that daycare is often where problems start).

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[K8-EEE]

8. My autistic daughter was the only one NOT on AT LEAST ritalin

In the 90's the doctors were prescribing those like candy.

In her pre-school special ed class -- I saw the other "easier" zombied out kids and just dealt with the tantrums. As her communication skills improved her tantruming subsided. I really don't think she would have had any language if she had taken all those drugs. At 16 she is far higher functioning than any of the "experts" ever predicted.