Is My 2-Year-Old Mentally Ill? How a Culture of Over-Diagnosis and Over-Medicating Is Harming Youth - PsychCentral
Childhood Mental Health Treatment: Can We Call Over-Medication Progress?
A disturbing trend has emerged in the health care field: Parents are visiting their doctor’s office asking whether children as young as 2 could have a diagnosable mental illness such as depression. And now more than ever, parents are likely to leave with a prescription in hand.
According to Medco Health Solutions, one in four children now take regular medication. The number of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder and the percentage using antipsychotic medication has doubled in the past decade (Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that nearly one in 10 children has been diagnosed with ADHD.
Have we become so accustomed to medicating problems away that we see pathology everywhere we look, or are we getting better at identifying disorders that were once dismissed as personality traits?
Childhood Mental Health Treatment: Can We Call Over-Medication Progress?
A disturbing trend has emerged in the health care field: Parents are visiting their doctor’s office asking whether children as young as 2 could have a diagnosable mental illness such as depression. And now more than ever, parents are likely to leave with a prescription in hand.
According to Medco Health Solutions, one in four children now take regular medication. The number of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder and the percentage using antipsychotic medication has doubled in the past decade (Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that nearly one in 10 children has been diagnosed with ADHD.
Have we become so accustomed to medicating problems away that we see pathology everywhere we look, or are we getting better at identifying disorders that were once dismissed as personality traits?
