War on Childhood: The Culture of Overmedication

The war on childhood, a deleterious phenomenon I've covered extensively, continues to harm our youth, deprive them of adolescent freedom, and potentially stunt their natural development. According to a recent study, powerful medicine is being dispensed at an alarming rate.

The use of powerful antipsychotics with privately insured children, aged 2 through 5 in the US, doubled between 1999 and 2007, according to a study of data on more than one million children with private health insurance in the January, 2010, "Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry."

The lead researcher on the study above, Columbia University psychiatry professor Mark Olfson, told Reuters that about 1.5% of all privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5, or one in 70, received some type of psychiatric drug in 2007, be it an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a stimulant or an antidepressant.

Of antipsychotic-treated children in the 2007 study sample, the most common diagnoses were pervasive developmental disorder or mental retardation (28.2%), ADHD (23.7%), and disruptive behavior disorder (12.9%).

Only a decrepit society would seek such early intervention whereby incipient intellects, personalities, and behavioral patterns are deemed pathological. Such a gross offense against nature could cause some lasting effects.

"These drugs have measurable severe hazardous effects on vital biological systems, including: cardiovascular adverse effects that result in shortening lives; metabolic adverse effects that induce diabetes and the metabolic syndrome," she wrote. "Long-term use of antipsychotics has been shown to result in metabolic syndrome in 40% to 50% of patients."

Psychiatric drugs bathe the brains of growing children with agents that threaten the normal development of the brain, according to Dr Peter Breggin.

One could wax about the collusion between psychiatrists and the companies that push for use of their products. Surely such an analysis could help expound upon the foundation of this problem. And those that naively advocate an unrestrained free market should heed caution when children become commodities for sale. Since I've covered it extensively before, I won't repeat my admonishment of the suburban helicopter mom who fears her progeny express merely average ability. Instead, let me focus on two additional social issues that underpin this issue.

First, while the article doesn't mention it, I imagine a large majority of the patients are boys. Much of the war on childhood represents a direct attack on the curiosity of adolescent males, the kind of wonder that leads to days in the woods, jumping off playground equipment, and taking apart various household gadgets. By framing this as abnormal behavior with an erudite name like ADHD, society opposes these natural predilections. We see a similar situation where free range boys (and girls) are constrained by hysterical mendacity concerning child molesters, environmental hazards, and junk food. Additionally, we impose the intended gender uniformity by depressing male rambunctiousness.

Second, the feminist indoctrinating of working age women leaves an entire generation without a mother figure. Exhausted from a day of fetching coffee or yelling at 30 first graders, suburban moms have little extra energy to discipline their own children. These drugs act as de facto babysitters, dampening the child's energy to make him more tractable to his enervated parents. One can imagine frustrated moms venting, "I just can't control him" and gladly accepting some "help". But instead of fixing the root cause, we've created a disheartening culture of youth medication that furthers the insidious war on childhood.