Psychiatric Medication Risk in Children

[Celebration]

http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/06/27/psychiatric-medication-risk-in-children/15109.html

A new study of adverse drug reactions in children showed that not only were a large percentage of reactions due to psychiatric medications, but that maternal use of some commonly used medicines resulted in some birth defects.

“A range of serious side effects such as birth deformities, low birth weight, premature birth, and development of neonatal withdrawal syndrome were reported in children under two years of age, most likely because of the mother’s intake of psychotropic medication during pregnancy,” Associate Professor Lisa Aagard of the University of Copenhagen told ScienceDaily. Aagard and Professor Ebbe Holme Hansard collaborated in studying data from Danish Medicines Agency.

With the dramatic rise of psychiatric diagnoses in children and the resulting increased use of psychiatric medications, some regulatory agencies have issued warnings about the risks associated with use of these medications in children. There is little data documenting the safety or effectiveness of many such medications in children, nor is there clear information about the specific risks. Most data about the potential risks in children comes from anecdotes and single case reports.

Aagard and Hansard analyzed all reports to the Danish National database of adverse drug reactions from 1998 to 2007 for children from birth to age 17. A total of 2437 reports regarding 4500 serious drug reactions were filed during this time period. 429 of these reactions were due to drugs classified as psychiatric medications.

[FirstLight]

1. This is the most disclosure on the subject I've ever seen

I have looked for information on the effects of zoloft during pregnancy. Most articles are really vague, but the ones that seem to have the meat are basically locked...can't access wiothout being a licensed practicioner and payiong a fee to read the article. so how is that helpful?

I took zoloft during my last pregnancy because it was easier for the docs to drug me than help me leave my abusive ex. (i asked for help in several different places, but he convinced them I was post-paretum from our previous child, who was under a year old)

Could see the problems in my son's behavior almost immediately...like PTSD and maybe a little autistic or OCD... but he is doing well now. thouh we had to eventually cave in and medicate him as well...

bad juju, wish we could do it all with diet & herbs, but sometimes brain chemistry gets fucked up. Hopefully we can get back on track without the stuff in the future...

[SheilaT]

2. Apparently the thalidomide horror

is now totally forgotten.

The absolutely most important lesson from that (and if you don't already know what I'm talking about, do a google on it)disaster was that the placenta is absolutely no barrier to drugs, unlike what was firmly believed before thalidomide.

When I was pregnant in 1982 for the first time, the general rule was not to take anything at all unless absolutely truly needed, and even then you needed to reconsider. When I broke my let at 7 1/2 months, my midwife was very hesitant to prescribe any pain medication for me. I finally persuaded her that I was far enough along, fetal development was nearly complete, and twenty-four hours of relief would help me a lot.

When I was pregnant the second time in 1987 I don't recall such a hyper-awareness of the dangers of any kind of drug or medication. And it seems as though since then a genuine complacency has developed about medications for mom. I think it's very much a part of the current drug culture, the one where nearly everyone is taking some kind of prescription medication because consumers have all too often been convinced that they absolutely have to take something every day for relatively minor things.

[stellanoir]

3. This has been troubling me for decades.

Here's someone who's been doing something about it for that long and then some. . .

http://breggin.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38

He's a real champion for the cause and is having a conference next spring in upstate NY. WooHoo !!!

[mopinko]

4. from your link-

Not satisfied with this huge expansion of the drug marketplace, psychiatrists advocating on behalf of drug companies recently began to diagnose thousands of children with bipolar disorder. The purpose? To justify giving more “mood stabilizer” and “antipsychotic” drugs to children. The FDA has cooperated by approving Risperdal for some diagnostic categories in childhood.

no, the expansion is due to the fact that bipolar disorder in children was not understood or recognized for a long time. now it is much better understood. now it can be diagnosed. the purpose is to help desperate families dealing with a child who is a danger to himself and others. that dx brings more than just an rx, it brings therapy, school modifications, relief for desperate parents.
there is always money to be made decrying change. sadly, people like this cause a lot of havoc when they interfere with kids and families getting the help they need.

[stellanoir]

5. Perhaps we can just agree to disagree.

I've long believed based on both observation and experience that different treatments work to varying degrees for different people.

Western allopathic treatments do indeed prove to be efficacious for some yet not all and not without unintended and often debilitating ". . .side effects which may include. . . " (insert the obligatory undesirable long term and sometimes lethal host of conditions here>>>>>>>>>> (we've all heard that rapid fire tiresome shtick rattled on almost inaudibly at the tail end of commercials when big pharma hawk their products on the tube to refute any liability whatsoever . . . Ughhh )

One one hand I agree that there has been a modicum of progress in terms of conventional treatment. OTOH all too many fall through the cracks and are labeled with terminal trash can psychological tags for a myriad of imbalances when the causality can be approached and more permanently ameliorated from an emotional and spiritual perspective just as well and in many cases with greater effectiveness than an approach that is solely biochemical.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/06/tracking-the-american-epidemic-of-mental-illness-part-i/

"insanity is a sane reaction to an insane world."

I've always gained tremendous solace from that quotation.

Given that in some pockets of neurology it's believed that most use only 10% of our cranial capacity, transcendence of "mechanistic reductionism" and "one size fixes all" treatments may only provide short term relief.

Sure if someone is a danger to themselves or to others then short term remedies do often help.

No one is decrying change and Dr. Breggin would have made a boatload of more dough had he not bucked the system by questioning treatments comprised solely of the prescription of psychoactive meds.

The term "bi polar" in in itself is fraught with superficial simplicity when many are drawing from elements far more diverse than the intractable dualism in which huge swaths of our collective seems to be stuck.

Again I do agree with you that many are in need of help and support and there *has* been some progress in terms of early diagnosis and . Yet the alleged silver bullet big pharma and health insurance co's endorse exclusively all too often can rip the fiber of the surrounding support system and is all too often not a long term remedy.

Peace

[Celebration]

6. lithium

Haven't there been studies showing that when there is some lithium in the drinking water, that violence is down in that area? I'm thinking that bipolar problems might be more of a nutritional deficiency for some people.....

If so, why not treat it as such, rather than with the stronger prescription drugs, or at least first see if something milder works?

Here is an example of one person changing type of lithium........

http://bipolar-hotbrain.blogspot.com/2009/12/lithium-orotate.html

[mopinko]

7. i find that quite frightening.

don't know anything about the water supply thing, but lithium is nothing to mess around with. self-medicating for bipolar is dangerous on it's face. you need a trusted observer no matter what you are taking or not taking. you also need a stable and accurately measured dosage. no way i would trust a supplement company on that one.
but lithium can do a lot of strange things to you if you aren't careful. drug interactions can cause all sorts of problems, including blocking metabolism of it, causing it to build up in your system until it kills you.
this is not a diy project.

[Celebration]

10. high dose vs. low dose

Lithium in the doses in prescription medicine are indeed frightening. In the water supply? We are talking about a much, much lower dose.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8025454.stm

Drinking water which contains the element lithium may reduce the risk of suicide, a Japanese study suggests.

Researchers examined levels of lithium in drinking water and suicide rates in the prefecture of Oita, which has a population of more than one million.

The suicide rate was significantly lower in those areas with the highest levels of the element, they wrote in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

High doses of lithium are already used to treat serious mood disorders.

But the team from the universities of Oita and Hiroshima found that even relatively low levels appeared to have a positive impact of suicide rates.

Maybe we all need tiny amounts of lithium?? :shrug:

[stellanoir]

8. Yup truly. . .

I should have advocated an emotional, spiritual, *and* nutritional approach.

Orthomolecular psychiatry has been an interest of mine for a very long time as well.

In the 90's I read about a mum who healed her son of ADHD by just eliminating wheat and sugar from his diet.

As for the lithium in the drinking water lowering violence, the way I heard it was that observation was precisely why lithium was first employed to treat bipolar conditions but at quick search I couldn't find any corroboration. Might be a psychiatric legend or somethin'.

[mopinko]

9. the trouble with drugs in children

is that it is pretty much impossible to ethically test drugs on children, except where you have gravely ill children with no other options. the chance of doing them harm, or of not treating a control that is sick, it is just a mine field. most things end up being used based on docs writing it for a kid and seeing how it goes. just trial and error followed by word of mouth.