PBS Frontline: The Medicated Child
I Tivo’ed Frontline’s “The Medicated Child” recently and finally got around to watching it the other night. This is a follow up from an episode they did on this back in 2001. You can watch and read about it online. It was somewhat disturbing at parts especially when they mentioned a young child who was on several atypical anti-psychotics at the age of four! Here are some of the interesting points brought up:
1. There has been a 4,000% increase in diagnosis of psychiatric problems in young children over the last ten years
2. Although doctors do not agree about bipolar in young children many kids are being diagnosed as being bipolar at ages as young as four years old.
3. There is a growing number of strip mall places offering “brain scans” looking at blood flow to the brain to give a diagnosis. The company featured was co-founded by a social worker and she was the one featured giving the family the diagnosis of the problem. To me this edges on the verge of giving medical advice but not being a medical doctor.
4. In one case they highlighted it was teachers who told the parents their child had ADHD. I know teachers and I do not envy their job but I think suggesting an actual diagnosis is inappropriate.
5. Another big problem mentioned only in passing on the program was that many of these children are being treated by family pediatricians and not by child psychiatrists.
I’m not always a fan of highlighting individual cases which may or may not be typical. However, these do pull on our heart strings and it does highlight how desperate these families become when dealing with “the problem child”. I truly feel for these parents who are trying everything to help their child but nothing seems to work. Just take a look at the discussion page and read what some of these folks have gone through. This situation is what leads to some of these snake oil salesmen mentioned in point 3 above.
Part of the problem is the whole quick fix attitude especially in the US and the resulting expectation (re-inforced by the pharmaceutical industry) that a few pills can solve all your problems. I have always believed that in the case of mental issues that medication and therapy together are much more beneficial than drugs along.
I really liked the program and highly recommend it. You can watch it for free online and they also have lot of information and further interviews with experts here. There is also a Parents Guide.
I personally look forward to the day when we can run a blood test or do a brain scan and come up with a definitive diagnosis and be able to confidently prescribe medications that will solve the problem >90% of the time. Unfortunately, I don’t know if this will occur in my lifetime. This is one situation where I truly hope I am wrong.
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