Beer. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

I have read some horror stories about people trying to go off anti-depressants. There is also some interesting research (I'm not certain how rigorous the studies were) about how Prozac and other anti-depressants effect sex drive and partner selection. Scary stuff.

I just don't see how a kid can live a regular life when they have been taking perscription mind altering drugs from such early ages. We keep pushing the age back too, its not even a teen issue anymore. I was reading a Q&A on a medical site the other day where a post started out with, "My 8 year old daughter has been taking Concerta for her ADHD..." 8 years old!! Her kid doesn't have ADHD, they just don't know how to parent!

I edit text books for special ed teacher training programs (is that revealing too much about my job? I hope I don't get fired!) and there is considerable controversy among authors (professors, doctors, professionals in special ed) about whether or not ADHD actually exists. There is also a huge push to use methods besides medication to deal with ADHD. So that's good news, I guess.

I think there is a great cure for ADHD out there: it is called discipline. Unfortunately discipline takes effort and we live in a rather lazy society.

Sometimes you all sound so conservative!!!

Ryan...I am a fan of the "sit down and shut up cure" myself. Unfortunately, "alternative" methods of teaching where there is no discipline and every child's feelings are treated like a golden cow have largely led us into this culture where we resort to sedating children to get them to sit still, rather than relying on teachers to enforce discipline!

Speaking of massaging children's feelings, I read an article a while back (I'll try to find a link or similar story) about how many schools are starting to take the competition aspect out of sports so that there are no losers. While I'll admit the competition has gotten out of hand here and there, parents beating up parents etc, there are important lessons in winning and losing and learning to deal with both. If you never teach a kid how to accept a loss, when are they going to learn? When they grow up how are they going to handle that first job interview that goes sour. How are they going to handle corporate competition?

I agree we need better discipline in our schools, but first and foremost there should be better discipline at home. School is not a daycare. When your kid hits age 7, you are not off the hook from being a parent.

Slashdot (I know, i know...) had an AskSlashdot on schizophrenia that was a great read because so many of the posters had family experiences with the disorder. The conclusion I synthesized is that the chemical imbalances in the body are real, and that drugs can be a quick and effective crutch. But popping pills never trains your body to re-balance itself, which is why the comment about Eli Lilly and Pfizer is oh too sad-but-true.

I agree that chemical imbalances are real, I certainly do not dispute the existance of mental illness. I do not however believe that even a tenth of the kids on perscription medication for ADD, ADHD, depression, etc.. are suffering from chemical imbalances. Doctors don't even take the time to make that kind of diagnosis anymore.

You can walk into nearly any doctors office in this country and say you are depressed and walk out with a perscription. We are in such a sick state of affairs that these perscription drugs make up 25% of the commercials we see on television. Now everyone is self diagnosing.. "hmmm.. maybe the commercial is right. I'm kind of sad, I should take Zoloft. I'm going to go ask my doctor for some."

Doctors are becoming little more than drug dealers with an education. It is a common saying when talking about buying drugs that "the first one is free." Next time you turn on the tv, open a magazine, or visit your doctors office, count how many advertisements you see for perscription drugs that use the words, "ask you doctor about getting a free sample today."

As a former teacher, let me just say there are scads of rules about how you can and cannot discipline children in a classroom, and I worked in an "urban" public school where the touchy-feely thing isn't really in vogue. I found that the bottom line is that if the parents aren't disciplining their child, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of that kid paying attention to a teacher.

I'm sure these mental illnesses do exist. The problem is there aren't good enough ways to diagnose them. We know approximately shit about how the brain works. ADHD, depression, when these things are due to chemical imbalances I see nothing wrong with taking a drug to fix the imbalance, but I'm sure many are taking the wrong drug or not the most ideal one.

Btw, only in the fairy tale propaganda coming out of our nation's Drug Warriors have I actually heard of illicit drug "pushers" who actually give out free samples. If these people actually exist please tell me where I can find them.

The first and primary responsibility does in fact lie with the parent. School should be simply buttressing the habits children are learning at home. It also doesn't help that nowadays, stupid parents never think their kid can do any wrong. When we were a better and stronger country, parents used to back up the teacher and the school without questions when it came to discipline problems. Now it is almost more common to have issues with the parent if you want to punish a child in a school setting. It's sad...just another part of the breakdown.

Trust me, ADHD really does exist and is not always the result of poor parenting. Ritalin and such can be very effective as a sort of work-around during school or whatever. Unfortunately, some people seem to have taken it as an excuse to give up and medicate children who simply do need discipline.

agent1023: I was more turning an old adage around rather than making a comment about dealers. I've never been approached on the street with an offer for a free sample. I am accosted daily by the drug companies with that offer though.

As for treating chemical imbalances with drugs: does the imbalance cause the depression or does the depression cause the imbalance? I believe the latter is true, I also believe the drug companies would like you to believe the former is the case.

Back to ADHD: Regardless of whether or not ADHD is real, it is estimated that 6 million children in the United States are taking perscription drugs for ADHD. That makes ADHD less of a disorder and more of an epidemic. You will never convince me that putting 6 million kids on speed is solving anything.

PBS did a story on ADHD -- approaching it from many perspectives. It is worth a look.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/

I'm surprised there isn't some sort of brain chemistry test necessary before the drug is prescribed. I suppose such tests would be expensive, but if I were about to put my kid on Prozac...

You really think the depression casues the imbalance? Interesting.

I know someone who's doctor suggested Prozac to them because their daughter died. Now this person's depression isn't caused by a chemical imbalance. Is it right to medicate this person to make them happy?

Oh yeah hi Emily it was nice to meet you too. And Karen too! (if my memory serves me correctly)

I belive you're thinking of Katie, polamex, but Karen used to hang out before she left us for California. Hell, maybe you've met her too :)

That's the thing though, if you are depressed because of a life changing event (like a death in the family), there must be physiological changes -- something is happening in your brain to make you depressed. Serotonin levels in your body drop, you feel sluggish and depressed, but eventually you "heal" and your body replenishes its serotonin stores.

Prozac fools your brain into thinking your body has more serotonin than it really does. You feel better while you are taking the pills, but your body isn't doing anything to reproduce the serotonin at the levels it should. In fact, the withdrawl symptoms from drugs like these are often so bad because while the patient has been taking them their body has been producing less and less serotonin -- rather than healing like it should.

There are much healthier ways to get your body to produce the chemicals it needs. Of the most simple and possibly the most effective: eating well and exersizing.

From the American Psychological Association:

Psychotherapy Versus Medication for Depression: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom With Data

The preponderance of the evidence suggests that the psychological interventions, particularly cognitive–behavioral therapy, are at least as effective as medication in the treatment of depression, even if severe.
...

Medications result in relatively poorer compliance than psychotherapy, have a higher dropout rate, and result in as much as a 60% nonresponse rate with some patient populations. Many antidepressants are cardiotoxic, have dangerous side effects, and are often used in suicide attempts. Psychotherapy can teach skills to help prevent depression, making such treatment an attractive, cost-effective alternative to drug treatments.
...
One might legitimately ask how medications have become the predominant treatment in the United States despite the considerable risks and side effects and despite the considerable evidence demonstrating the efficacy of psychotherapy. At least part of the answer, effective marketing, has been well-documented elsewhere ("Miracle Drugs," 1992; "Pushing Drugs," 1992; Breggin, 1991). Other factors contributing to high use of antidepressant medications include the higher rate of reimbursement by some third-party payers for medical interventions relative to psychotherapy (usually 80% vs. 50%) and the pressure from some managed care organizations to use a seemingly quicker, apparently cost-effective drug treatment.

Nice report. I know some study somewhere says that anti-depression pills do no better than a placebo (~30%). But I also know a few people who used anti-depressants for some amount of time and they said it really helped. But I dislike Eli-Lilly and Pfizer.

Emily: Doh! I'm bad with names, at least I remembered the K part.

As we all know, there are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics. Be careful what you believe, even if there was a study.

I am not Katie, but I do have the same number of letters in my name. So hello none the less. Hello to all!

I think I am very careful of what I believe -- I don't take any study as the be-all-end-all-truth. This is why I was very skeptical when there was a front page story in the New York Times about a study "proving" Prozac to be more effective than traditional therapy.

I'm terribly guillible, which is a shame because I think skepticism is important. I like James Randi.