The Medicated Child Summary

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The video, “The Medicated Child,” is a PBS documentary on the rising numbers of children diagnosed with significant mental disorders, from ADHD to Bipolar disorder. This also shows the significance of heavy medication of those children with largely untested drugs. Something that was only touched on briefly by one specialist is that these untested drugs are being pumped into our children with little- to no- testing for the effects on children, in general, as the human brain is still vastly not understood and to introduce stimulants and depressants into a developing brain is borderline insane itself, and worth of a disgnosis for heavy medication itself. When interviewing the representative of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), he stated…show more content…
For anyone who is knowledgeable in the slightest about drug trial procedures, you may need to wait years to be approved to test on primates with some drugs, however, these drugs are being thrown at hundreds of thousands of children each year. I think attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may exist, but with a significantly lower prevalence than is currently reported. In my absolute, honest opinion, the vast majority of those that “suffer” from ADHD are more likely to be dealing with significant behavioral issues with an underlying cause lying outside any perceived mental disorder. There was a study released in 2011 that stated that children from low-income families were approximately 40% more likely to…show more content…
When analyzing one child who may, or may not, see side effects which include tics, anxiety, chest pain, psychiatric disorders, or blood pressure changes, there is something to keep in mind about the widespread use of such tactics on the children and their developing mentality. The old saying goes, “the children are our future,” with that being said, what future are we establishing with this plethora of medication? Long term physiological and psychiatric effects are in much debate with very little data on either, however, there are some concepts that do not require firm statistics to realize an issue in the making. An article on anti-depressants brings to light a concern that does not appear much in the ADHD debates, that of a child's sense of self (Sharpe, 2012). Adults diagnosed with depression, or even adult ADHD, have an idea of who they were before the medication, and as such, can see the differences that medication may, or may not, have made. The, arguably, more adverse, long-term effect, is that it gives an illusion that behavioral problems can be solved with drugs and prevents us from seeking the more complex solutions (Sroufe,

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