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Do meds work? Yes, in fact, they're now mandatory!

By Damien Stolarz
April 4, 2005 | Comments: 3

Mandatory meds

For a kid who grew up with the DARE program (Drug Abuse Resistance Education, aka "drugs are really expensive") I'm amused that we gave up on drug abuse prevention and now we're on the road to making drug use mandatory.

"[There has been] an unprecedented call for mandatory mental-health screening of schoolchildren in [the] recent budget. Violating the rights of parents to just say "no" to psychiatric diagnosis and treatment of their children, this idea originated in the President's New Freedom Commission. (from the article linked)

(Link to the President's benign announcement speech of the New Freedom Commission)

Dystopian Cynicism

Putting on my cynical dystopian commentator hat, I guess I have several comments:

Apparently you SHOULD use drugs to solve your problems - DARE was wrong.

Don't buy cheap drugs from the people in your neighborhood; Self-prescribe the drugs you see on TV or in magazines, which are covered by your insurance, and get them only through authorized distribution channels.

The Great Psychopharma Blamestorm

The interesting thing to watch is the massive blamestorm visible on the horizon. The FDA is already backing away (with warning labels) from potential liability suits for all the crazy/dead children cases that are pending for antidepressants. While there were a bunch of cases against Prozac in its early days, one of the weaker cases got dismissed and that was used as a sort of domino to knock down the others in a clever defense strategy.

Lately, though, there has been an notable increase in Columbine-like activity and a groundswell of increasingly critical public attention. I wouldn't be surprised if the FDA eventually finds a link between aggressive and destructive activity towards OTHERS (not just suicidal) and antidepressants. I can see the headlines now:

"Guns, pot, and steriods don't kill people - adolescents on meds do!"

Or,

"With kids like these, who needs terrorists?"

One of the greatest catalysts for change in the USA is the powerful combination of dead children, grieving parents, and lawyers.

I imagine lawsuits will first go after deep-pocketed pharma manufacturers, and may possibly try to make the government/FDA share some liability. When that starts to happen, the government will launch inquiries, and pharama may pass the buck to the authors of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), and the scientists who develop diagnostic procedures and categories.

Adolescent Psychosis and Science

Nowdays, kids "go crazy" and kill innocent people at an alarming statistical rate. There's some sort of epidemic (contagious?) psychosis, and the real crazy thing is: THEY'RE ALL ON MEDS WHEN THEY DO IT. Clearly we haven't applied the best medical/scientific technology to the situation, otherwise we'd have it under some control, just like AIDS or any other epidemic. And I think we all agree that it takes more than D&D or 3D video games to make somone psychotic.

I long for the good old days in the 80's when kids just robbed their grandmas to pay for their crack addictions, or maybe a half dozen gang members might shoot each other.

Although a very controversial idea, I've had drug legalization advocates argue to me that that no one goes crazy and kills people on pot or even other "dangerous" street drugs. While I can't agree with that, I can hardly agree with how it's being addressed now. Some of my favorite musical artists (Kurt Cobain, John Lennon) have been victims of ineffective pharma - and a friend of mine from P2P days (Gene Kan) was also tremendously un-helped by our primative technology in this area.

I'm very hopeful that the best minds among us will get to the bottom of the recent exponential increase in adolescent psychosis. I hope our brightest scientists can quickly discover what sort of mosquitos are spreading this mental malaria.

Comments (3)
Read More Entries by Damien Stolarz.

3 Comments

robotarmy said:

you make two excellent points
You make two excellent points. I've removed "bush" from my blog because I doubt he has much to do with drafting the proposal and I am not critical of Bush on this issue at all.

I agree that the original article reads like a rant, as it is. That's why I chose to write my commentary on the issue, as i have trouble reading and sharing rants even if I agree with some of the points.

I agree with where you put the responsibility.

April 5, 2005 11:37 AM

linuxactivist said:

While I agree...
I tend to agree that our kids are over-medicated. I was a problem student in my younger days, but my mother took the creative solution of having me pick two items from a sears wishbook catalog and asked my teacher if I could tape them to my desk. We were "government cheese poor," (literally), and getting gifts of this nature was a big deal. If I could conform within my ability to the rules of quiet and order mandated by a classroom, I had a camera (nothing special in terms of ability, but a big deal to me) and a model of the Space Shuttle. After an entire semester of staying in my seat and controlling my outbursts by staring holes through those pictures, I was rewarded with both the items and the skills that I learned during the ordeal. Creative parenting saved the day, even when my friends were already some of the early generation to have such outbursts medicated away.

Having said that, I do think we need to be careful of saying that all pharma is evil. I have had two close relatives and a number of friends that have to struggle with depression. Part of that struggle was due to family and friends that saw it as a sign of weakness and not an illness. It was only after having the courage to go against this teaching that they sought the help that they sorely needed and were greatly helped. Now they are all vocal about the need to treat mental illness as illnesses and not be ashamed of them and, in doing so, have helped other people overcome stereotypes and seek help.

April 5, 2005 9:01 AM

jwenting said:

hmm...
Where's the proof that the president indeed called for all children to be put on antidepressants?
A link to an official government website hosting the full text of the speech he said so expressly would do...

I fully agree that giving children pills to keep them quiet is wrong, don't get me wrong on that. But this whole thing reads like just another anti-Bush rant rather than anything substantial.

It's been practice for years to class any activity in children such as to call those children hyperactive. ADHD is the result...
Until recently that disease didn't exist in any numbers. Sure there was the occasional hyperactive child which might be impossible to keep quiet without valium, but it seems that currently any child that isn't a couch potatoe is considered hyperactive.

It's not the president who's responsible for that, it's parents who don't want to spend time with their kids and doctors who take the easy (and for them profitable) way out (and maybe teachers who think like the parents...).

April 5, 2005 12:53 AM