The findings that “medical experts called troubling” about the dramatic rise in the use of psychiatric medications for children under the age of 5 (News, Feb. 23) is not “troubling” but alarming.
As a psychoanalyst working with children and adults, I call it “medication madness,” a symptom of unmanaged health care, untested and unproven results, and vulnerable parents and children.
Any competent child psychotherapist will tell you that the overused diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is often a diagnosis of a child and a family struggling with emotional difficulties and tension. And these difficulties were not caused by the child’s symptoms. When treated psychologically, such symptoms can usually be handled without medication and, if so, very temporarily.
But it takes intense and ongoing collaborative efforts of the therapist, the child, the parents and school.
The National Institutes of Mental Health director cites the lack of clinical trials of safety and efficacy of both pharmacological and psychosocial treatment. Before agreeing to medications, parents must consider the impact these drugs are having on the physical and emotional development of our children. Children, parents and adults who have benefited from ongoing psychotherapy for anxiety and depression will attest to the efficacy of this form of treatment with nothing but positive human and emotional side effects.
The public as consumers, professionals and politicians must stop the medication madness, fight managed-care insensitivity to family mental health and demand needed and ongoing “talking therapy”–not quick-fix, bottom-line medication interventions disguised as effective treatment.
