A recent 12-year Canadian study has found a possible link between medications used to treat anxiety or insomnia and an increased risk of death.”These medications aren’t candy, and taking them is far from harmless,” said researcher Geneviève Belleville, a professor at Laval University School of Psychology.
Dr. Joan Luby, the preschool depression researcher at the center of a New York Times article that failed to mention her past research was funded by Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Shire (SHPGY) and AstraZeneca (AZN), is currently testing the antipsychotic Risperdal on autistic children aged 30 months to 5 years old, according to the ClinicalTrials.gov database. Although the study is not funded by Janssen, the unit of J&J that makes Risperdal, it nonetheless typifies a new field of drug research: The use of mood-altering pharmaceuticals on the very, very young.
Last week, the New York Times ran a sad yet compelling story about a boy named Kyle, who at 18 months was put on antipsychotic drugs to quell severe temper tantrums. By the time he was 3, the poor kid had been diagnosed with autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia and “oppositional defiant disorder” (um, isn’t that a fancy phrase for “normal toddler behavior”?). He was on the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and a pill for attention-deficit disorder. Did you read that?! Prozac! Sleeping pills!
Today, the use of psychoactive drugs by children (6-17) is all too common, relied on far too much and growing at an alarming rate. It all started in the ’70s. Memorialized in 1966 by the Rolling Stones’ “Mothers Little Helpers,” it was at that time that our society took the first steps at becoming “Pill Crazy.”
FIVE YEARS ago, I found my 17-year-old son dead in his bed, and apparently five years is too long to be manifesting the symptoms of sadness: sleeplessness, the sudden and inexplicable onset of overwhelming memories and tears, the occasional entire day spent lying in bed. My time was up two weeks after we found him, according to the proposed fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. If the new edition is approved, my symptoms will be diagnosed as a major depressive disorder.
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