If you go to this link, it looks like the segment will be archived there after airing. UPDATE: watch video here From the site: The Watch List: The medication of foster children On this week’s episode of Need to Know, we go inside the foster care system for an installment of The Watch List: We... Continue Reading →
The Real ‘Precious:’ Beyond Pity Porn
By Diane D’Angelo Last week I went shopping for “new” used clothes. I really hate spending much money for stuff to wear through the wretchedness that is a Phoenix summer, where the challenge is to cover what you absolutely must with the lightest fabric possible. As I flipped through the racks – slide, slide, slide... Continue Reading →
Psychiatric drugging of children — part 1 and 2
Psychiatric Drugging of Infants and Toddlers in the US - Part I by Evelyn Pringle-- The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world for kids with children being medicated at a younger and younger age. Medicaid records in some states show infants less than a year old on drugs for mental... Continue Reading →
Some of the senators in Florida are really fighting for the rights of kids in foster care
The senate in Florida are talking about the rampant drugging of children in foster care. This is a nation wide problem that is being focused on in Florida because of the suicide of a young child in foster care who was grossly overmedicated. These senators will hopefully influence the rest of the country in questioning... Continue Reading →
Medicating kids is in the limelight…
There was a horrifying article the other day in the New York Times oozing praise on Judith Warner. It turned my stomach and I had no interest in sharing it here as I can't write commentary at this time. But today, with the below piece I'm happy to bring light to this atrocity. This article... Continue Reading →
Childhood trauma and psychosis
Great academic article from 2008 that very credibly disputes the biomedical model of psychiatry. This is just a small excerpt: From Journal of Post Graduate Medicine: A recent review of the North American psychiatric literature over the past 40 years concluded that potential social causes of psychosis, including schizophrenia, have been neglected in favor of... Continue Reading →
This week in links
From over the weekend and Monday, some important articles: ***Think Twice: How the Gut's "Second Brain" Influences Mood and Well-Being: Scientific American -- A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little... Continue Reading →
Creativity: A Crime Of Passion — creative children are often those who are called difficult
First, teachers were asked if they valued creativity and enjoyed working with creative students, and they overwhelmingly answered "yes". Next, they were asked to look at their own students and rate them on a variety of traits, ranging from highly creative traits, such as being determined, independent, individualistic, impulsive, and likely to take risks, to traits that are associated with low levels of creativity, such as peaceable, reliable, tolerant, steady, and practical. After they rated their students on these traits, they were asked to rate them from their least favorite to most favorite students. Interestingly, there was a significant negative correlation between the degree of creativity of the student and his favorable rating by the teachers. This means that the most creative students were the least favorite of the teachers, across the entire sample surveyed.
Bipolar diagnoses in foster children rise, informed consent becomes a bygone
Informed consent has never existed in any meaningful way in psychiatry. This headline pretends that it has. None the less, what is happening to our most vulnerable children is a travesty and it's unprecedented. From the Chicago Tribune: Powerful mood-altering drugs were prescribed to hundreds of Illinois foster children without the required consent of state... Continue Reading →
US Kids Represent Psychiatric Drug Goldmine — Evelyn Pringle
By Evelyn Pringle Permission to reprint from Evelyn Pringle Prescriptions for psychiatric drugs increased 50 percent with children in the US, and 73 percent among adults, from 1996 to 2006, according to a study in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Health Affairs. Another study in the same issue of Health Affairs found spending... Continue Reading →
Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics
This isn't new to most of us who read this site, but it's good that it's finally making the mainstream media. The article speaks for itself. From the New York Times: New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher... Continue Reading →