(no subject)

[mrsbrown]

I read this article this morning and particularly noted the last paragraph:

This month, an Australian study found that antidepressants should not be used in children, and that clinical trials had exaggerated the benefits of the drugs while playing down their potential side-effects.

hmmm... I was on antidepressants for 2 years when I was 5-7. I wonder what the side effects were/are?

Now I think a little more... what was I doing that required drug treatment? I was angry, and playing up A LOT in school, but isn't that reasonable when your parents separate? Actually, that was at the same time my uncle was committing incest, no wonder I was angry!

I guess I was on drugs because my mother has infinite belief in the wisdom of medical science, or certainly did then. Huh!

Comments

[hometime.livejournal.com]

Something that annoys me is the medicalisation of behavioural problems. There is a growing trend for medicating kids instead of sensibly looking at the reasons for their behaviour.

Some people just don't have the right chemical balance in their brains, and this makes them more susceptible to depression or other problems. And these people need medication to correct the imbalances! And some kids (and adults) really do have ADD or ADHD. But (I personally believe) many of the kids currently on medication for ADD/ADHD probably don't really have these conditions, and would be better treated in other ways rather than medication. End rant here.

But it sounds like you had prefectly valid reasons for your behaviour at the time. And as a kid you were responding to these problems as best you knew at the time. I agree with you, medication seems to be a strange answer.

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

When there's that much money to be made, of course they're going to skew the results. Unfortunately it seems to be more and more that all research needs a commercial sponsor.

You know, sometimes when you talk about what happened, I have a vision of finding that man, and running over him in a truck.