U.S. should follow Australia’s lead to investigate suicide in children caused by antidepressants. With 2.1 million Americans aged 0-17 prescribed the potential suicide-inducing drugs, including…
IT’S been branded a “dangerous public experiment” that could turn normal human experiences into an epidemic of mental illness with healthy people being drugged unnecessarily.
In radical changes to the way mental health conditions are diagnosed, what was once considered a child’s temper tantrum could be labelled ”disruptive mood dysregulation disorder”. If a widow grieves for more than a fortnight she might be diagnosed with ”major depressive disorder”. If a mother in a custody battle tries to turn a child against the father, it might create ”parental alienation disorder”.
These are among new conditions proposed for the fifth edition of the psychiatrist’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), due to be finalised next year.
A photograph of an unnamed boy in a cage features in Sean O’Carroll’s exhibition about Ritalin.
A BOY crouches naked in a steel animal cage, with the downcast eyes of a prisoner.
This confronting image, meant to represent a ”chemical cage” of drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is part of an exhibition called Ritalin by photographer Sean O’Carroll.
O’Carroll, a former teacher, said the exhibition expressed his concern about the widespread administering of what he called addictive mind-altering drugs to young boys, which was ”a catastrophic failure on the part of our society to deal with the challenge of raising active, energetic and ‘difficult’ boys”.
Children as young as two are being given powerful antipsychotic medications, raising concerns use of the drugs are not being properly monitored and could be putting children at risk of serious side effects. Figures from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing show 559 WA children were given at least one antipsychotic drug subsidised on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in 2007-08.