Ten percent of ten-year-old boys now take daily stimulants for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Another half a million children take anti-psychotic drugs. Between 1993 and 2004, the number of children diagnosed with "juvenile bipolar disorder" (a diagnosis that didn't exist just a decade earlier) jumped forty-fold.
Those are just some of the startling statistics in a frightening but compelling two-part series that appeared in The New York Review of Books (June and July of 2011). I am certainly a believer in good psychiatry but this series, which takes a look at the science and business of psychiatric meds, is an eye-opener. And make no mistake - it is a business - psychiatrists receive more money from pharmaceutical companies than any other speciality.
The stats on children being medicated is just a small part of these articles. Overall, it looks at the brain science of how these drug work - or don't work - on the general population. It also provides a pretty scary look at who influences the formation of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders): the Bible for psychiatrists - and, in turn, insurance companies - for defining what constitutes a mental illness.
The medicalization of boyhood is of interest to me because of my book; but the overall picture is deeply alarming.
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