Over Medicating Our Youth

Over Medicating Our Youth provides knowledge for parents, educators, and physicians to consider the etiology or causation of behavioral conditions before medicating children with psychiatric and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) symptoms. The prescribing of stimulant and psychiatric medications prior to ruling out nutritional, physiological, and environmental causation for behavioral conditions requires reform. This book provides guidance for parents, educators, and physicians to utilize effective alternative treatments plans as well as assessments prior to prematurely medicating children. The recent United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) Child Foster Care report uncovered the injustice of overmedicating children with ADD stimulant and psychiatric drugs. The GAO report proves that a positive change in the treatment of childhood behavioral conditions should involve a more comprehensive assessment as to the causation of behavioral symptoms.

Over Medicating Our Youth provides knowledge for parents, educators, and physicians to consider the etiology or causation of behavioral conditions before medicating children with psychiatric and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) symptoms. The prescribing of stimulant and psychiatric medications prior to ruling out nutritional, physiological, and environmental causation for behavioral conditions requires reform. This book provides guidance for parents, educators, and physicians to utilize effective alternative treatments plans as well as assessments prior to prematurely medicating children. The recent United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) Child Foster Care report uncovered the injustice of overmedicating children with ADD stimulant and psychiatric drugs. The GAO report proves that a positive change in the treatment of childhood behavioral conditions should involve a more comprehensive assessment as to the causation of behavioral symptoms.

This book exposes the skyrocketing rate of antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children, identifies grave dangers when children's mental health care is driven by market forces, describes effective therapeutic care for children typically prescribed antipsychotics, and explains how to navigate a drug-fueled mental health system. Since 2001, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of antipsychotics to treat children for an ever-expanding list of symptoms. The prescription rate for toddlers, preschoolers, and middle-class children has doubled, while the prescribing rate for low-income children covered by Medicaid has quadrupled. In a majority of cases, these drugs are neither FDA-approved nor justified by research for the children's conditions. This book examines the reasons behind the explosion of antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children, spotlighting the historical and cultural factors as well as the role of the pharmaceutical industry in this trend; and discusses the ethical and legal responsibilities and ramifications for non-MDs—psychologists in particular—who work with children treated with antipsychotics. Contributors explain how the pharmaceutical industry has inserted itself into every step of medical education, rendering objectivity in the scientific understanding, use, and approvals of such drugs impossible. The text describes the relentless marketing behind the drug sales, even going as far as to provide coloring and picture books for children related to the drug at issue. Valuable information about legal recourse that families and therapists can take when their children or patients have been harmed by antipsychotic drugs and alternative approaches to working with children with emotional and behavioral challenges is also provided.

The American Epidemic: Solutions for Over Medicating Our Youth provides new knowledge for parents, educators, all healthcare professionals, and public health policymakers to help rule out underlying risk factors of behavioral conditions prior to premature drug therapy. Nutritional, physiological, and environmental risk factors have created a behavioral health crisis in America. The American Epidemic: Solutions for Over Medicating Our Youth reveals how to eliminate these risk factors and revert children to normal behavior without drug therapy. Also discussed is the prudent use of drug therapy protocols to prevent harmful side effects.

The American Epidemic: Solutions for Over Medicating Our Youth provides new knowledge for parents, educators, all healthcare professionals, and public health policymakers to determine the cause of behavioral symptoms prior to psychoactive drug therapy in children. The Action Plan for Childhood Behavioral Conditions is a step-by-step solution to rule out nutritional, physiological, and environmental risk factors. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) Child Foster Care drug audit report uncovered widespread abuses of overmedicating our children with ADHD stimulant and multiple psychoactive medications. The GAO report proves that the assessment and treatment of young children with behavioral symptoms requires immediate reform. The Action Plan for Childhood Behavioral Conditions will help you: - Understand the critical role parents play in child behavioral health- Unite parents, educators, and healthcare professionals to determine the cause of behavioral symptoms- Learn how to help your child develop a focused and healthy mind- Eliminate nutritional, physiological, and environmental risk factors that mimic childhood behavioral symptoms

The Children's Mental Health Industry, like any other industry, is built on stakeholders, products, and consumers'and the institutional reach of drug makers is far deeper and wider than commonly understood. The past twenty years in particular have seen tremendous distortion of the health care system's ultimate and intended mission to reduce suffering, promote health and improve healthcares outcomes via carefully considered, scientifically based treatment. While having made wonderful advances, the pharmaceutical industry is guilty of rampant abuse in encouraging overmedication. Between 2009 and 2014, major pharmaceutical manufacturers were fined more than $11 billion for illegal trade practices, many involving the illegal promotion of ?off-label? drug use, which is what killed my son. I was surprised to learn that atypical antipsychotics as a drug class, at $16 billion in annual sales, are now second in sales only to cancer drugs. Also, many of the recipients are under eighteen years old, a population for which many of these drugs have never received explicit FDA approval, but they are prescribed at a doctor's discretion under a loosely structured methodology called off-label prescribing.During that same time, due to the increasing dependence on medication, there has been a dramatic reduction in other forms of therapy -- especially psychotherapy and counseling. In fact there is an inverse relationship -- the more medication, the less non-medication approaches. You would expect, then, that this trend would be supported by results indicating that our children are getting healthier. The unfortunate fact, however, is just the opposite -- and will continue to worsen as long as the unjustified drug-orientation continues to be eagerly supported by psychiatrists, insurance companies, drug companies as well as school systems.I hope in writing Overmedicated and Undertreated and sharing my son's story there will be the emotional hook to help galvanize minds around this increasingly issue of over-medication and under-treatment. This is a cautionary tale that serves as a powerful illustration of the damaging and deeply institutionalized conflicts of interest begging for reform in our toxic Children's Mental Health Industry. Please go to OvermedicatedandUndertreated.com for more information

A truly international collection, this volume features new global research examining the cultural construction of youth, through the dissemination of moral panics. This is the first book to make the most of the latest contemporary research to examine this