A study of more than 200,000 preschool-age children has revealed an
alarming tendency in American public schools to treat "behavior problems" and
related eruptions in children with potentially damaging mood-altering drugs.
According to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association, the number of 2-4 year olds on psychiatric drugs including
Ritalin and anti-depressants like Prozac soared 50% between 1991 and 1995.
The trend has continued upward since then as well.
Experts said they are troubled by the findings, because the effects
of such drugs in children so young are largely unknown.
Dr. Joseph T. Coyle of Harvard Medical School's psychiatry department
said the study reveals a troubling trend, "given that there is no empirical
evidence to support psychotropic drug treatment in very young children and
that there are valid concerns that such treatment could have deleterious
effects on the developing brain. "These disturbing prescription practices
suggest a growing crisis in mental health services to children and demand
more thorough investigation," Coyle wrote in an editorial accompanying the
study.
A grossly under-reported aspect of the increase in violence among
many school children centers on the fact that in almost every high profile
case of school shootings and related incidents, the perpetrators had in the
past used one or more of these kind of mind-altering drugs. The fact that
such drugs are now being dispensed to ever younger children does not argue
well for the future.
[Citizen Informer - Mar. 2000]
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