Psychiatric Drug Use Among Preschoolers Leveling Off, Study Shows

Doctors are slower to prescribe medication for children when it comes to treating mental health disorders, a new study shows.

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Parents Not Vaccinating Kids Contributed to Whooping Cough Outbreaks

California’s worst episode of whooping cough, or pertussis, in 2010, likely spread among unvaccinated children to infect 9,210 youngsters.

Read more >> Parents Not Vaccinating Kids Contributed to Whooping Cough Outbreaks

More women prescribed psychiatric drugs and left at risk of birth defects

Women of child-bearing age are increasingly being prescribed psychiatric medications that can cause pregnancy complications and birth defects, doctors fear.

Read More >> More women prescribed psychiatric drugs and left at risk of birth defects

New Warning Against Anti-Psychotic Medication Use Among Children

The American Psychiatric Association's (APA) new warning of the disputed uses of anti-psychotic medications is part of a broader campaign to educate patients and doctors about unneeded and possibly harmful medical treatments and tests.

New Warning Against Anti-Psychotic Medication Use Among Children

A Toddler on 3 Different Psychiatric Meds? How Drugging Kids Became Big Business

On December 13, 2006, paramedics arrived at the Plymouth County, Massachusetts, home of four-year-old Rebecca Riley only to find her slumped over on her parents' bed, dead. The medical examiner on hand identified the cause of death as heart and lung failure brought about by the medications she was on. Rebecca was being prescribed Depakote, Seroquel, and Clonidine by Dr. Kayoko Kifuji, a Tufts-New England Medical Center child psychiatrist. She had diagnosed Rebecca with ADHD and bipolar disorder when she was two years old. Rebecca's death provoked a national debate on how a child as young as two could ever be diagnosed with major mental illnesses and be put on powerful tranquilizers. Katie Couric eventually covered the story in a CBS 60 Minutes segment.

Read more >> A Toddler on 3 Different Psychiatric Meds? How Drugging Kids Became Big Business

New Study Links Antipsychotic Risperdal to Increased Diabetes Risk

A new study reveals that antipsychotic medications, such as Risperdal (risperidone), which are being prescribed to a growing number of children, have been tied to serious side effects including increased risks for diabetes. This is not the first time that Risperdal side effects have been the focus of medical research, including ties between Risperdal and diabetes.

New Study Links Antipsychotic Risperdal to Increased Diabetes Risk

Over-Medicating Our Children…Abuse By the Pharmaceutical Industry?

This school year, beware of those who try to influence you to put your children on drugs.

Over-Medicating Our Children…Abuse By the Pharmaceutical Industry?

American Schools Are Failing Nonconformist Kids. Here’s How

Of the possible child heroes for our times, young people with epic levels of the traits we valorize, the strongest contender has got to be the kid in the marshmallow study. Social scientists are so sick of the story that some threaten suicide if forced to read about him one more time. But to review: The child—or really, nearly one-third of the more than 600 children tested in the late ’60s at Bing Nursery School on the Stanford University campus—sits in a room with a marshmallow. Having been told that if he abstains for 15 minutes he’ll get two marshmallows later, he doesn’t eat it. This kid is a paragon of self-restraint, a savant of delayed gratification. He’ll go on, or so the psychologists say, to show the straight-and-narrow qualities required to secure life’s sweeter and more elusive prizes: high SAT scores, money, health.

American Schools Are Failing Nonconformist Kids. Here’s How

Forced chemo: Should court overrule Amish parents?

A legal fight between a hospital and an Amish family in Ohio over whether doctors can force their 10-year-old daughter to resume chemotherapy after her parents stopped treatment is again raising questions about what rights parents have in making medical decisions for their children.

Forced chemo: Should court overrule Amish parents?