COMMENTS: 76
Why Are We Drugging Our Kids?
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Prescriptions for psychiatric drugs increased 50 percent with children in the US, and 73 percent among adults, from 1996 to 2006, according to a study in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Health Affairs. Another study in the same issue of Health Affairs found spending for mental health care grew more than 30 percent over the same ten-year period, with almost all of the increase due to psychiatric drug costs.
On April 22, 2009, the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported that in 2006 more money was spent on treating mental disorders in children aged 0 to 17 than for any other medical condition, with a total of $8.9 billion. By comparison, the cost of treating trauma-related disorders, including fractures, sprains, burns, and other physical injuries, was only $6.1 billion.
In 2008, psychiatric drug makers had overall sales in the US of $14.6 billion from antipsychotics, $9.6 billion off antidepressants, $11.3 billion from antiseizure drugs and $4.8 billion in sales of ADHD drugs, for a grand total of $40.3 billion.
The path to child drugging in the US started with providing adolescents with stimulants for ADHD in the early 80s. That was followed by Prozac in the late 80s, and in the mid-90s drug companies started claiming that ADHD kids really had bipolar disorder, coinciding with the marketing of epilepsy drugs as "mood stablizers" and the arrival of the new atypical antipsychotics.
Parents can now have their kids declared disabled due to mental illness and receive Social Security disability payments and free medical care, and schools can get more money for disabled kids. The bounty for the prescribing doctors and pharmacies is enormous and the CEOs of the drug companies are laughing all the way into early retirement.
Psychiatric Drugs Explained
During an interview with Street Spirit in August 2005, investigative journalist and author of "Mad in America," Robert Whitaker, described the dangers of psychiatric drugs. "When you look at the research literature, you find a clear pattern of outcomes with all these drugs," he said, "you see it with the antipsychotics, the antidepressants, the anti-anxiety drugs and the stimulants like Ritalin used to treat ADHD."
"All these drugs may curb a target symptom slightly more effectively than a placebo does for a short period of time, say six weeks," Whitaker said. However, what "you find with every class of these psychiatric drugs is a worsening of the target symptom of depression or psychosis or anxiety, over the long term, compared to placebo-treated patients."
"So even on the target symptoms, there's greater chronicity and greater severity of symptoms," he reports, "And you see a fairly significant percentage of patients where new and more severe psychiatric symptoms are triggered by the drug itself."
Whitaker told Street Spirit that the rate of Americans disabled by mental illness has skyrocketed since Prozac came on the market in 1987, and reports: (1) the number of mentally disabled people in the US has been increasing at a rate of 150,000 people per year since 1987, (2) that represents an increase of 410 new people per day and (3) the disability rate has continued to increase and one in every 50 Americans is disabled by mental illness.
The statistics above beg the question of how could this happen when the so-called new generation of "wonder drugs" arrived on the market during the exact same time period. The truth is, the "wonder drugs" cause most of the bizarre behaviors listed by doctors to warrant a mental illness disability.
Psychiatric Drug Goldmine
The CIA "World Factbook" estimate the world population to be about 6.8 billion and the US population to be a mere 307 million. In an April 2008 report, the market research firm Datamonitor reported that the "US dominates the ADHD market with a 94 percent market share."
ADHD drug prices at a middle dose for 90 pills at DrugStore.com, are: Adderall $278, Concerta $412, Desoxyn $366, Strattera $464 and Vyvanse $385. Daytrana costs $437 for three boxes of 30 nine-hour patches.
The SSRI and SNRI antidepressants include GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil and Wellbutrin, Pfizer's Zoloft, Celexa and Lexapro from Forest Labs, Luvox by Solvay, Wyeth's Effexor and Pristiq and Lilly's Prozac and Cymbalta. The average price of these drugs is about $300 for 90 pills at DrugStore.com.
The prices for anticonvulsants can run as high as $929 for 180 tablets of Glaxo's Lamictal, and $1170 for 180 tablets of Johnson & Johnson's Topamax.
In 2008, the atypical antipsychotics took over the slot as the top revenue earners in the US, and include Seroquel by AstraZeneca; Risperdal and Invega marketed by Janssen, a division of J&J; Geodon by Pfizer; Abilify from Bristol-Myers Squibb; Novartis' Clozaril and Eli Lilly's Zyprexa. The average price on these drugs for 100 pills at DrugStore.com is about $1,000. Lilly also sells Symbyax, a drug with Zyprexa and Prozac combined, at a cost $1,564 for 90 capsules at DrugStore.com in May 2009.
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Posted by: victoriahokulani on Dec 14, 2009 12:44 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
How will history view the insanity of these times? At what point do the masses begin to awake from this fog of disconnection from their own bodies? I do believe we are in a vicious spiritual war with ourselves. Until we reclaim our true intended medicine; Cannabis, then we are truly headed to the depths of the Pharmaceutical abyss.
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» RE: Medicated Masses Perfect Consumer Pawns
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» RE: Medicated Masses Perfect Consumer Pawns
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» RE: Medicated Masses Perfect Consumer Pawns
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» RE: Medicated Masses Perfect Consumer Pawns
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» RE: Medicated Masses Perfect Consumer Pawns
Posted by: Sister_Lauren
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Posted by: DanielHaszard on Dec 14, 2009 12:47 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Eli Lilly has made $38 billion on Zyprexa and it was way oversold and caused diabetes and in some cases sudden death.
Eli Lilly has received a huge criminal fine over their Zyprexa cash cow,add it all up comes to $4.6 billion, in Zyprexa settlements,fines,litigation.
----
Daniel Haszard Zyprexa whistle-blower http://www.zyprexa-victims.com
WARNING-
If a drug (Zyprexa) lists anything about the pancreas among the side effects, it probably means it can cause diabetes.
Unlike your liver, the pancreas does not regenerate itself. If it gets damaged, diabetes is very likely
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Posted by: richholland on Dec 14, 2009 2:16 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
American kids are overweighed and their parents overworked.
Learn to suffer, soon you ll die in when you in in hell it is life as used to.
when you come in heaven (unlikely, if you are colored or unemployed)
you will enjoy double.
Do you realise the Europen states support financelly grandparents to take care of the kids because with patience and love you need less DRUGS.??
Sorry any attempt to hinder corporations to make profit is;
socialistic, commumistic, racistic, unamerican, it is a hatecrime to want to help your kids and not buying all the crazy drugs yiu can buy.
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Posted by: Nitestallion on Dec 14, 2009 2:30 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The most likely answer to this is a resounding "NO"! Ritalin is a drug that is absolutely draconian in its effects. On the street it is called a “Psychedelic Speed”. This substance is addictive and the damage it does is physical and irreversible. The Physicians I have talked to use other psycho tropics to control the depression that the come down causes.
The physicians are not wholly to blame here they must follow AMA guidelines or lose their license to practice medicine. I grant that this is hypocritical instead of Hippocratic. But, discounting a few outstanding Hippocratic Oafs most doctors are trying to help and unfortunately many of them have bought into the Pharmaceutical companies heavily. (As in Investors) So they cannot be counted upon to represent their injured patients to the drug company lawyers for settlements.
This creates a fine stew of mixed emotions and loyalties. By the bye, “House” is a neat diagnostic sales pitch but THAT IS ALL IT IS! One would be better off trusting a witch doctor than a so called diagnostician. Please forgive this apology but in the interest of truth I have survived five (5) misdiagnoses. I am still here because the mistakes were caught in time to prevent serious damage.
The point is if you trust a physician you will get good treatment till you are fleeced naked and then given the bums rush when it is time to pay up and you are inadequately insured. At this point you should have at least prepared a good burial plan so that your loved ones ready cash is not eaten up by the undertaker.
PSYCHO TROPICS OF ANY KIND ARE GOOD FOR NO ONE! Make sure you read the Ritalin books and trial studies. Thorazine is still used no matter what they tell you at the mental hospitals. It will melt your brain and cause turrets syndrome. (Imagine standing in front of a judge, stamping your foot and yelling cocksucker at the top of your lungs three times in a row, being unable to stop the compulsion.) If you are given Mellaril it is the same drug but buffered in a different composition. Do not take Adderal, Ambien, Abilify or Ativan, these can slow reaction time and the ability to make quick decisions, this is to say NOTHING of their contraindications to their effects on organs.
Never under any conditions take Lithium bearing medications, this drug is especially insidious attacking the brains ability to reflect on past events and when the medication is discontinued, without fail all patients experience debilitating depression or feelings of worthlessness. All problems not dealt with because of the drug including the ones encountered while on the drug return full force. Feelings of suicide and homicidal anger can and often do surface. Please for the love of sanity think long and hard about what you put into your body that crosses the blood brain barrier!
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» RE: Most psychotropic meds will perform as advertised, what are their contraindications?
Posted by: snax
» RE:You make allot of gerneralized statements here convoluting reality with hyperbole.
Posted by: Nitestallion
» RE: You make allot of gerneralized statements here convoluting reality with hyperbole.
Posted by: snax
» RE: Most psychotropic meds will perform as advertised, what are their contraindications?
Posted by: popeurbanxxiii
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Posted by: mlrobbs on Dec 14, 2009 2:44 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Firstly, we are a monumentally stupid people led around like dumb farm animals by the corporations that have replaced our former government of, by and for the people (with apologies to A. Lincoln). Moo!
In the second and last place, money! We exist to CONSUME whatever goods and services the corporations can come up with at the highest prices that anyone on the planet would pay for the same goods or services. DUH!
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Posted by: Scheherazade on Dec 14, 2009 2:51 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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» RE: This article seems to overlook things
Posted by: Liberalandproudofit
» RE: Maybe they are on to something
Posted by: Sister_Lauren
» RE: Maybe they are on to something
Posted by: Scheherazade
» RE: This article seems to overlook things
Posted by: Scheherazade
» RE: As I said elsewhere here, check out "Our Daily Meds" . . . here's some info:
Posted by: Scheherazade
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Posted by: jackkane on Dec 14, 2009 3:04 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Hell, the two treatments are contradictory. If there is something physically wrong with my brain, words won't fix it. And if I'm just confused and need to be talked out of my silliness, then why stuff me with toxic pills?
In the end I used alcohol as a painkiller, and after about 18 months the depression went away. No longer depressed, I stopped drinking. Not that alcohol is all that great, mind you, but at least with alcohol you know where you stand. Doctors like to tell you that you shouldn't drink when depressed, but you should take pharmaceuticals. This is blatant hypocrisy.
Why is psychiatry so revered? Its history is full of idiocy and madness. Asshole psychiatrists used to think gayness is a mental illness – and they killed Alan Turing, for one, for his (homo)sexuality. In the 50s, psychiatrists treated mental illness with seizures induced by either insulin injections or electricity. Who's the psychopath here?
Then of course there is lobotomy...
The modern theory of the biological nature of mental illness is as stupid as the old theories (one of which associated body postures with various mental illnesses... no joke!). If the problem is biological, then why do psychiatrists diagnose patients with questions rather than clinical measurements (on something other than one's posture)? The definitions of the mental illnesses are ludicrous. A schizophrenic is a person who perceives things that aren't real. Then why aren't all the Christians committed? Why isn't Bush in the psych ward? He kept seeing WMDs when none existed. What about ADHD? Hell, one can argue there's something wrong with a kid that doesn't exhibit the ADHD symptoms.
There are thousands of other such 'diseases', most of them 'discovered' in the last 30-40 years, all of them treatable with pills.
Because of fun customs such as involuntary confinement and the acceptance of psychiatric evaluations in criminal trials, the credibility of psychiatry is a critical issue that must be seriously scrutinized. It is disconcerting that people take the psychiatric/ pharmaceutical drivel seriously. The results are dire – millions of children are poisoned, thousands of families suffer medical bankruptcies, and every year the cost of health care gets worse.
What is to be done? The criminal pharmaceutical cartel must be busted. Psychiatrists should be dealt with. Anyone who insists pills, seizures and lobotomies cure mental illness is either a lying thug to be put in jail, or a crazy person to be put in the happy house, or a moron to be given toilets to clean. We can leave the psychologists alone, in case someone wants to buy happy words.
Our understanding of mental illness is limited. The only reasonable approach to the problem of mental illness (and the related problem of drug abuse) is prevention. Most mentally ill people have been through ordeals – take a look at the rates of mental illness incidence among veterans and bums and rape or child abuse victims. We live in a violent, depressing world. Make it nicer, and depression and all the other horrors of the mind will largely vanish. And, recognizing our insignificance, and realizing every living thing will inevitably die, and facing the pains of old age, well, maybe depression is natural and a part of what makes us human. You know what they say, no pain, no gain.
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» RE: Who are the crazy ones?
Posted by: TimV
» RE: Who are the crazy ones?
Posted by: zugzwang
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Posted by: Nitestallion on Dec 14, 2009 3:25 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Damage done to a child is not always apparent we cheat and hide it from ourselves and the doctors and teachers. If you believe in the bad seed concept I got a bridge I want to sell you real cheap! What parts of manufactured chemicals are not in the body to begin with do you not get?
I get told all the time "well the body manufactures its own chemicals we are just helping out for the Childs own good.” Horse shit you are trying to alter a behaviour pattern by force of will through drugs! No child is born bad you can’t get that it seems. There is always a reason for bad behaviour EVEN IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE REASON.
Leave the children alone! It is better that adults are not present at all if they are going to teach hackneyed values that have proven themselves false time and again! Adults abuse children willingly if unknowingly. Stop it just stop! Don’t take your anger out on a child; don’t strike a child ESPECIALLY in my presence. Don’t call a child evil or verbally abuse a child in public. Just a few simple rules and I will bet a lot of wandering behaviour will go away. But, BE THERE for a child stop your golfing or computer shit long enough to recognize a child’s needs.
Above all don’t believe or listen to some psychiatrists prognostications further after he says: some children are just born bad. Horse fucking shit!
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Posted by: LeonBNJ on Dec 14, 2009 3:37 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
You have the above issues, a doctor offers you that a miracle drug can help, one they have been bribed to offer by drugco marketing compounded by marketing to patients or their parents. The side affects are ignored, only seeing the good. The drug companies only see the money, not unlike the street pusher of hard drugs. That these drugs, some of which are very expensive are paid for by governments and health insurance plans with little oversight further encourages excessive use. If people had to pay for these drugs at full price, they might say no a lot more.
We need to end the marketing of drugs as we know it, limit compensation of executives, put more liability for drugs side effects, government and insurance co's put well-structured limits on payments for these risky and high priced drugs. Most of all parents, kids and others must 'just say no' and try to be more selective in taking drugs and seek non-drug alternatives (perhaps including pot?). Perhaps most of all more parents must be more directly responsible for raising their kids, take time with them, realize they can't be perfect or drugged into submission.
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» RE: We want easy ways to control our kids
Posted by: flirt
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Posted by: artie on Dec 14, 2009 4:17 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Based on that identity, those whose behavior seems to 'threaten' an already egregiously shallow folk psychology are judged "depressed" or "psychotic" or "insane" or "bipolar" or "ADHD" or, etc. These folk psychological judgments are then accorded some psychiatric facon de parle, and the psychiatric Inquisition then follows. The conclusion, of course, is that some deviation of brain function needs correction, some electrochemical dysfunctional synaptic circuitry needs short-circuiting; thus, the psycho-pharmaceuticals - after all, every 'mental' function/dysfunction is really identical to some brain function/dysfunction.
The American public has too little respect for Life, to put it in an oxymoron, Life's infinitely complex simplicity!
I was diagnosed with 'Clinical Depression' several months after a series of tragedies disheveled my life: my father, and months thereafter, my sister passed away, and this was later punctuated with a divorce, leaving me to care for two children.
I was grateful for the scintillating brilliance of the 'shrink' that explained my situation to me, and recommended that I start some regimen of chemicals. However, I asked myself: what kind of "monster" would I be had I NOT responded with depression not only to the uprootedness and anxiety that Death laid at my door, but the rejection from an Other and the fear of being completely responsible for two other innocent human lives that divorce finally placed on my plate? What is more, what kind of 'monster' could see my response as, in some sense, aberrant, and requiring medication - what disrespect for Life!!!
It is now through the eyes of such monsters that the American public sees Life! To see a human life as requiring medication in virtue of the suffering that it endures, the exhaustion that is the signature of its daily orbit, the isolation and alienation that characterizes its 'time-less' life, if you will - one in which it has no "time" - is morally despicable (not to mention metaphysically deluded)! It betrays the vilest disrespect for the human heart - we are so infinitely complex that we DO NOT KNOW what Mind is!!
However, the American public is so thirsty to conceal from itself its own disregard for Life and its own irresponsibility for human life that it intoxicates itself with the psychiatric Mind=Brain paradigm and drowns itself in synthetic sorrows....
After a regimen of life's simplicities, life changed: rediscovering love and care for others, walks with my sons, 'building' dinners together with REAL FOOD (a la Pollan), and literature, and art, and music, ..., in short, just one of your typically 'boring' lives that reveals Being! I think this a better prescription!
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Posted by: moloko velocet on Dec 14, 2009 4:44 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This has had an exponential effect on the "overdosing" of the American public in general, and children in particular.
When I complain to my doctor of some symptom...after the inevitable battery of "tests"...he immediately suggests some new pharmaceutical "wonder drug"...in every case I ask, and explore any natural, Ayurvedic, herbal or OTC alternative...or, in many cases, I simply refuse the prescription, and resolve to live with it.
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» RE: Learning to refuse what is offered
Posted by: hedgewytch
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Posted by: bigbrother on Dec 14, 2009 5:07 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
My sister in law who serves on a number of boards involving autisim. One of her children has is it and she treats him mainly holistically. The improvement is astounding.
If the parents are willing, children can be cured without drugs. The medical profession is often the last place to get healthy treatment!
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» sweeping generalizations justified by an anecdote
Posted by: susanh
» RE: Parents at fault. Hmm, say rather brain and soul damaged.
Posted by: Nitestallion
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Posted by: henderson on Dec 14, 2009 5:09 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
And if anyone says to me, "Oh, there's SOME good in television", I know they're already brainwashed. Hopeless. I don't HAVE a TV in the house - haven't had one for 25 years. And will NEVER have one. Get rid of the perpetrator.
TV SLIME, by Frank Zappa
I am gross and perverted
Im obsessed n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little had changed
I am the tool of the government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you
I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think Im delicious
With the stuff that I say
I am the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I am the slime oozin out
From your tv set
You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't got for help...no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold
That's right, folks..
Don't touch that dial
Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin along on your livinroom floor
I am the slime from your video
Cant stop the slime, people, lookit me go
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Posted by: Richardsievert on Dec 14, 2009 6:03 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Things will continue to be bad unless we all get madder' Than hell we must knock on doors and gather silently Intel we have 40 million and then march on these baby killers' And put them all in the prisons they made for us.
period
why am i still here and they did not pick me up'
because I can. "And that should be enough' I am a part of something bigger than them and they no it I hope and pray these monsters change because if they don't we will come for our bone!
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Posted by: drricklippin on Dec 14, 2009 6:46 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Especially because these are children.
SHAME ON AMERICAN MEDICINE
Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton,Pa
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Posted by: Prinzowhales on Dec 14, 2009 6:53 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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» RE: Another area in which the Populist Right and Progressive Left are in agreement...
Posted by: VZEQICVA
» One of the main reasons they "follow our example"
Posted by: clresu
» RE: One of the main reasons they "follow our example"
Posted by: Prinzowhales
» seeds and armed revolt
Posted by: clresu
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Posted by: Spiritgirl on Dec 14, 2009 6:56 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Only in America where Free-markets mentality reign supreme is it an oxymoron that freedom of choice = profit for BIG BUSINESS, and heaven forbid, that anyone should come between BUSINESS&PROFIT!
Only in America where child obesity is running at 60% because they don't get to run outside and burn off that energy, so that they are then labeled as ADD or ADHD so that they must be put on medication - (and the parents actually buy that line because after all the doctors have told them they must) which really hasn't been tested on children, but it's alright because PhRMA has to make it's money!!!!
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Posted by: VZEQICVA on Dec 14, 2009 7:07 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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Posted by: Ayla87 on Dec 14, 2009 7:12 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
At the end of every marking period this process is exacerbated during a PPT; In which the student sits and listens to all of his teachers point out his personal and academic flaws, and hear suggestions on how he should be treated. The student get's to voice his opinion on the matter, but the truth is he has no say. The student is just there to make it look like the school gives a damn. They don't. If they did they wouldn't have threatened him with expultion if he doesn't attend.
That was my life for eight years. I was diagnosed with an LD that I didn't have, based on symptoms that were so vague any child with a poor home life (like me) could've been diagnosed. Not only was I misdiagnosed, but I was never told the name of my disability until I was almost 16, right before they threw me out of SPED. And the only reason they threw me out of SPED was becasue I had openly expressed my intetion to drop out of school the first change I got becasue I couldn't take the bullshit anymore. Had they kept me, they would've had to spend actual money on me, given the fact that I was now considered an at risk student.
Children who have legitimate learning disabilities are seldom treated for them. That would mean actually spending the extra money schools recieve from state and federal programs to treat the disability. The only time a truly LD kid receives treatment in public school is when they have a compassionate teacher or a persistant parent in thier corner. And even then, you have to fight. Some parents have to threaten a lawsuit to get anything done.
Remember that when your children become school aged. If a teacher comes up to you and suggests your child may have an LD, chances are they don't. They're just normal healthy children, stuck in a system that looks down on individuality, high energy.
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» Intro was cut off
Posted by: Ayla87
» RE: Drugs aren't the only things used to control children.
Posted by: Morell
» While this is a sad story, the other children and other parents are going to be up in arms if. . .
Posted by: Beck
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Posted by: vvtempo on Dec 14, 2009 7:19 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Jess
Ultimate Privacy
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Posted by: Morell on Dec 14, 2009 8:38 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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Posted by: clresu on Dec 14, 2009 9:11 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There's normally an ongoing debate here on alternet about vaccines; after reading "our daily meds" I realized that it's close to absolutely impossible to trust anyone who says anything about any medications, including vaccines. They may or may not be telling the truth, which is to say, they may or may not - though more likely the former - be on the pharmaceuticals' payroll.
I am against the death penalty, with the single exception being its use with pharmaceutical executives/employees.
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Posted by: chetdude on Dec 14, 2009 9:44 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
They're bombarded from the earliest ages with confusing images and messages to force them to become good little consumers of crap food, crap clothes and crappy crap (iPods, tennis shoes and 9mm Glocks) while they breathe and drink the crappy byproducts of the crappy metastatic industrial growth environment and their future promise is a crappy job in a crappy company making more crap for a paycheck.
If you really want to know, it's the Korporate Kapitalist Konsumer Kulture that's fucking up our kids, the drug pushers are just a symptom!
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» RE: Time to Connect the Dots
Posted by: VZEQICVA
» Wow
Posted by: clresu
» RE: Time to Connect the Dots
Posted by: Nitestallion
» I agree, but also
Posted by: clresu
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Posted by: djnoll on Dec 14, 2009 2:39 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I would offer a couple of suggestions:
1. First, get rid of these school psychologists, let them open private practices, and if necessary, a school guidance counselor can refer problem, real problem, children and their families to them.
2. Re-instate recess and physical education into all schools through the high school level. Once kids can get outside or into a gym to work off the energy build-up they exhibit better behavior control in the classroom and are more receptive to learning. This has been proven over and over, yet gets ignored in favor of test coaching.
3. In the November/December issue of Countryside Magazine there was an article titled "Confessions of the World's Worst Parent" and in the January/February issue is a followed letter entitled "I am a bad mom, too!" These are must read articles for parents and offer some valuable lessons for teachers as well. When we divorce ourselves from our children, and when we allow fear to determine how we live our lives and the lessons we teach our children, we all lose.
It is time for parents to once again begin to parent. If you are working three jobs, this is difficult, I know, but please make the time to spend with your children, do not put them in front of a TV or computer and walk away. Encourage them to go outside and do things, or develop friendships that can offer them a chance to grow up together. When we do these things, we reduce the need for drugging our children.
The use of drugs is a cop-out by teachers, school administrators, school psychologists, and parents who all want a docile child who is undemanding. Heaven help them if a child is smart, inquisitive, imaginative, friendly, and active - they cannot cope, unfortunately for the child! It is time to stop drugging our children and let them be children once again instead of drug addicts. Google (or search on Amazon.com) for children, nature and education, and you will find books and ideas for encouraging educators and parents to get children out into the world again, and thereby make them better students and people.
Parents, take time to spend with your children, listen to them, get to know their problems and their questions (yes, I know this is nearly impossible with teenagers, but try), teach them how to be friends and neighbors by being one yourself. Trust me, you will be amazed at what happens.
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Posted by: PaulK on Dec 14, 2009 2:47 PM
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Posted by: PaulK on Dec 14, 2009 3:01 PM
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I got lectures by a prejudiced history teacher for a year. He was so stupid that I knew I had to question everything out of his mouth.
I grew to despise my homework assignments. If they assigned it, it must have bogus elements somehow. Being intensely intellectual, I'd go off and read 300 pages of something else overnight and ignore the English assignment.
I'd get detention.
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Posted by: wint on Dec 14, 2009 4:29 PM
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Posted by: Alenna on Dec 14, 2009 4:44 PM
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Today's kids have global warming, peak oil, the rise of corporate power, toxic pollution everywhere, the US deficit, Iraq and Afghanistan etc...
Best to keep them dumbed down with TV and numb with drugs. We wouldn't want them thinking too hard about the future.
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Posted by: rdrjames on Dec 14, 2009 5:00 PM
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I don't see any studies being done here on the correlation between obesity and mental illness. Wonder why that is! Is there a disconnect here?
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Posted by: rdrjames on Dec 14, 2009 5:01 PM
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I don't see any studies being done here on the correlation between obesity and mental illness. Wonder why that is! Is there a disconnect here?
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Posted by: garyfee on Dec 14, 2009 5:17 PM
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Posted by: rdrjames on Dec 14, 2009 5:37 PM
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Jimof Olym
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Posted by: plantland on Dec 14, 2009 5:40 PM
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Only the insurers have been made to look lilke the bad guys for the health reform debate.
Pharmaceuticals have only been mentioned by Dems in terms of "access"- problems of affordability solvable by health reform.
Physicians should look into diet, test for food intolerances, etc.- then try changes at home, and only as a last resort, prescribe medications and monitor that.
(In the old days, a doctor also knew more about the family since the doctor made house calls. Many didn't charage ,and got up and made house calls at night even knowing the family was unable to pay.)
Progressives have roundly supported reform.
Now overwhelmed physicians will spend even less time per patient before writing scripts.
Parents get angry if they go away empty handed, or don't get an antibiotic for a virus.
There is TV in the waiting rooms, and no one recommends parenting books, or books on how to identify food allergies through elimination diets.
The FEINGOLD diet doesn't work for everyone, but if a childs acts up whenever he gets orange juice, for example, and he gets it daily, figuring that out and making changes makes the whole family happier.
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Posted by: maxsmart on Dec 14, 2009 6:12 PM
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» RE: All people are deranged but the deranged are the sane ones.
Posted by: DaBear
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Posted by: Eddie Van Helsing on Dec 14, 2009 9:15 PM
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Thanks for nothing, assholes.
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Posted by: DaBear on Dec 14, 2009 10:00 PM
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Gottstein should have to live with a kid with bipolar wiring. He should have to do so during a depression/mixed state where a 12 year old with BP is suicidal and raging and be denied all medications, psychiatric support, etc.
Then he should be stripped of his immense wealth and privilege and hung from the nearest tree if he still insists that such a child should not have access to medication, off-label or not.
FACT: off-label meds are how 99% of non-farmer/normal wirings are treated, even in adults.
FACT: Medicaid serves kids who cannot afford meds to begin with. You call yourself progressive?! With progs like you who needs a fucking neocon?
FACT: MI's (or non-farmer/normal, attention-different wiring) in children is REAL, Mr. Gobshitt. Deal with it.
FACT: Fewer kids would be labeled with an "MI" if their wiring was ACCEPTED by 'Merkaaner classholes as "adaptive-advantaged wiring." Guess what, the same asshole rich guys like Gobbshitt continue to deny reality, deprive kids of what they need, marginalize and criminalize those of us who aren't wired like him and then treat us like shit and fakers. People like him can just fucking go. to. hell. He wants to take us back to the god damned dark ages when they locked us up and chained us to chairs and other shit. Over my dead body.
The day kids should be denied medication for having genetic wiring that manifests as "mental illness" or attention difference is the day public schools ACTUALLY service children who march to the beat of a different drummer.
Call me when that shit happens. Under the owning-class imposed NCLB, it ain't gonna. In the meantime, don't fucking try to deny my kid life-saving meds, you fucking idiot, overpaid, overprivileged god damned fucking rich asshole!
For all the asshats in the comments who can't separate Big Pharma's malfeasance from the reality of MIs and attention-different wiring, fuck. you. When you can live with our kids without labeling them, criminalizing them and shooting them via your law enforcement goons, then we can talk. Until then. Eat. Shit. and DIE.
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» RE: Gottstein's war on poor kids. IS a reality wake the f--- up yuppies!
Posted by: Nitestallion
» No wonder DaBear's kids need drugs.
Posted by: wisegalah
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Posted by: MJ Fields on Dec 15, 2009 12:12 PM
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Posted by: bukoo on Dec 18, 2009 6:15 PM
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Posted by: mxcm428 on Dec 22, 2009 4:16 PM
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Links of London Necklaces Szabo Links of London Earrings wanted Links of London Rings a vaginal Links of London Chain delivery and Links of London Pendants argued with hospital executives
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