Mark Twain opens his novel Tom Sawyer with a scene from his own childhood. “‘Tom!’ No answer. ‘Tom!’ No answer. ‘What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You Tom!’ No answer.”
Tom, it emerges, is hiding from Aunt Polly in the closet. He’s been stealing jam again.
Twain meant the book as a fond recollection of boyish mischief. He would have laughed out loud at the suggestion such pranks could be a symptom of mental illness.
Yet that’s exactly what some child psychologists are now telling us. Here’s a list of the “symptoms” they say are indications of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: “Failure to pay close attention to details, failure to listen when spoken to, follow through on instructions, finish chores… “
Sound familiar around your house?
Or perhaps your son doesn’t do what he’s told? That’s now called “Oppositional Defiant Disorder.”
Does he chew his nails or bite his lip? Could be “Social Anxiety Disorder.”
If he has difficulty falling asleep at night, the problem might be “Separation Anxiety Disorder.”
We’re saying “he,” because according to the experts, boys are nine times as likely to have these “disorders” than girls.
Of course that fact alone would seem to suggest a more innocent explanation — they’re just boys being boys. But this isn’t merely an argument about labels.
The range of childhood behaviours now classified as clinical disorders is growing at a fearsome rate.
Consider the following statistics:
According to the U.S. Surgeon General, 20 per cent of American children suffer some form of mental illness, as the term is now employed. The same would be true for Canadian children.
The number of kids diagnosed with autism in developed countries has increased as much as 500 per cent in the last decade.
Between 1993 and 2003, the number of youngsters found to have bipolar disorder in the U.S. jumped 40-fold.
Mental illness is now a leading cause of childhood hospitalizations in Canada and the U.S.
If those trends continue, psychologists are on the way to making childhood itself an illness. That raises some troubling issues. Just diagnosing a child as “ill” is life-changing.
What once seemed normal, or at least bearable, now has more sinister implications. But with a clinical diagnosis comes treatment. That might involve therapy, and possibly drugs, stretching over several years. And that too is a worrisome prospect.
At a minimum, it’s fair to say no one knows the implications of medicating children over long periods of time. Yet what we do know is scarcely reassuring.
The standard prescription for disorders like ADHD is a psycho-stimulant such as Ritalin. While some physicians claim to get good results, recent studies have raised doubts whether these medications do any good at all.
What’s not in doubt are the side-effects, some of which, like stunted growth, are clearly undesirable.
Of course it will be argued that psychology is doing us a service, that this huge burden of childhood illness it claims to have uncovered was there all along. And there may well be some truth in this. In the “bad old days,” no doubt kids with genuine problems were left to fend for themselves. A recent study found that nearly 70 per cent of adolescents in juvenile detention had ADHD or a similar disorder.
I’ve discovered a very disturbing trend over the last couple of days, I’ve unearthed something very wrong with modern medical sciences. Doctors today are diagnosing kids with bipolar disorder, some kids as young as 2. 2?! That’s younger than Abby. I was diagnosed at 17, and the doctors in the UK are very wary to diagnose someone younger that the age of 18 with the illness. So I know that this is just an American thing, it’s just like the whole ADD/ADHD craze of ten years ago.
I read a story about a doctor who diagnosed a little girl who was 2 and a half years old with bipolar disorder. He put her on the drugs Clonidine, Depakote and Seroquel, the last of which is a potent, poisonous, antipsychotic. None of these drugs have been passed by the FDA for kids, you have to be at least 16 years old to take Seroquel. I know, because it’s one of the drugs I take. And so, the following happened:
Rebecca became like a “floppy doll” and died December 13, 2006, at 4 years of age, not from a psychiatric disease, because there is no such thing, but from the very real, very toxic psychiatric drugs prescribed for her. Incredibly, her parents sit in jail, charged with her murder.
This doctor who prescribed these toxic medications for her was a child psychiatrist. What the HELL ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH were the parents thinking when they took their TODDLER to see a psychiatrist? Kids that young DO NOT need to see professionals like that. Moodiness, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and lack of appetite is just what kids do. You cannot mould your children into perfect members of society with medications. They need to scream at you, they need to try and push their weight around. Toddlers are like mini teenagers without the need to constantly spend money.
Mental illnesses were unheard of in kids when I was younger. Whether it’s down to just not having the research there, or whether some crack-pot has come out of the cupboard to declare all children bipolar, I just don’t know. Why can’t some doctors/psychiatrists understand that not all kids need to be medicated? I’ll leave with a final quote:
In 2004, the federal Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about an increased risk of suicide in children taking certain psychotropic drugs. The FDA also conducted a review of antidepressant trials in children between 1988 and 2006, concluding that the benefits of such medications outweigh the risks for most children, but that in certain individuals, the risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors was almost doubled by the treatment.
Double the suicidal thoughts? Surely that says something? 
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