mentioned in the blog post by Howard Koseff, below....I was perusing the comments in Nicholas Kristoff's column about the AAP policy and found one by Pittsburgh clinical psychologist Sharna Olfman that she left on Jan. 9 at 12:07 pm (in case you want to read the entire comment).
Her upcoming book (with Brent Robbins) "Drugging Our Children: How Profiteers Are Pushing Antipsychotics on Our Youngest, and What We Can Do To Stop It" is scheduled for publication on Feb. 28.
Here's part of her comment:
"A deeply entrenched belief within the children's mental health field is that most learning and behavioral challenges stem from genetically influenced imbalances in brain chemistry that can be fixed with psychotropic medication, in spite of the fact that the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness has been largely discredited. This misguided belief has been relentlessly promoted by the pharmaceutical industry intent on protecting its market share. It has lead to an epidemic of children being prescribed dangerous "drug cocktails" that increasingly include antipsychotics. Over the past half decade, there has been a fourfold increase in prescriptions of antipsychotics to socioeconomically disadvantaged children, in spite of the fact that there is no compelling research to support their use."
Comments (0)