Watchdog calls for tighter regulation on foster care prescriber relationships with drug companies

Scrutiny of doctors who prescribe psychotropic drugs to California foster children intensified Monday, with growing calls for regulators to consider whether financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies may be driving the excessive use of medication.

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Drugging our kids: RX alliance rewards doctors as drug companies get richer

Olivia Hernandez always trusted the doctors who scribbled out prescription after prescription for the heavy-duty psychiatric drugs that clouded her teenage years in foster care.

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Drugging our kids: RX alliance rewards doctors as drug companies get richer

Olivia Hernandez always trusted the doctors who scribbled out prescription after prescription for the heavy-duty psychiatric drugs that clouded her teenage years in foster care.

Drugging our kids: RX alliance rewards doctors as drug companies get richer

Medicare Now Covers Genetic Tests for Targeting Depression Drugs

An oral swab test that gives doctors an easy-to-read report to help guide decisions about prescribing depression medications is now available to 50 million Americans on Medicare.

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ADHD Surge Is More Marketing Than Medicine

You can't catch attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) but you wouldn't know that by the way diagnoses are spreading - up 10X in some countries. 
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How A Nuisance Ordinance Could Threaten Housing for Current, Former Foster Youth

How A Nuisance Ordinance Could Threaten Housing for Current, Former Foster Youth

The Oakland City Council’s unanimous adoption of an amended Nuisance Eviction Ordinance (NEO) threatens the stability of some of our most vulnerable current and former foster youth, particularly those who have been or are currently victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

Vaccine court keeps claimants waiting

A system Congress established to speed help to Americans harmed by vaccines has instead heaped additional suffering on thousands of families, The Associated Press has found.

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ADHD Spurred by Schools?

Can a four-year old child in kindergarten “fall behind” in learning two weeks after starting school? According to notes being sent home from teachers in New York City to mothers of these youngsters, yes. Today children are being asked to learn more, perform better, rank higher and qualify sooner than their counterparts 10, 20, 30 years ago, and it shows. Is the startling number of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in fact spurred by schools today?

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Schools Deal with Behavior Problems

Virginia schools are increasingly confronted with youth who exhibit challenging behavior.

And while schools sometimes use physical restraint and seclusion to de-escalate a crisis, the state does not have any explicit laws or regulations that govern their use.

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Most Parents Agree All Kids in Day Care Should Be Vaccinated

About three-quarters of parents would consider removing their childfrom a day care center if some of the other kids there were unvaccinated, a new survey found.

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Why We Need to Abandon the Disease-Model of Mental Health Care

The idea that our more distressing emotions such as grief and anger can best be understood as symptoms of physical illnesses is pervasive and seductive. But in my view it is also a myth, and a harmful one. Our present approach to helping vulnerable people in acute emotional distress is severely hampered by old-fashioned, inhumane and fundamentally unscientific ideas about the nature and origins of mental health problems. We need wholesale and radical change, not only in how we understand mental health problems, but also in how we design and commission mental health services.

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More than 100,000 anti-psychotic scripts written for KIDS last year

An unprecedented number of children are being prescribed strong anti-psychotic medication, sometimes by doctors who have little experience in dealing with child psychiatric experience.

New figures revealed by the ABC show that more than 100,000 scripts were written for children around Australian for such medications in the past year.

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Day care druggings spark call for change; investigation shows provider violated law for years

Lawmakers and children’s advocates are calling for a crackdown on illegal day cares after an Indianapolis provider who’d been cited repeatedly for violations pleaded guilty to drugging children in her care.

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Curb ADD without drugging up your kid

Food can be medicine if done right.

Curb ADD without drugging up your kid

Prenatal Air Pollution Levels Linked to ADHD in Kids

Kids who are exposed to the highest levels of air pollution before birth have a greater risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms than their less exposed peers, according to new research.

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Pediatricians Cutting Corners in Diagnosing and Treating ADHD

Previous research has shown that behavior therapy, combined with medication, is the best approach for treating ADHD. Yet a new study shows that physicians fail to assess symptoms thoroughly before making an ADHD diagnosis and rely too heavily on medication to treat it.

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Typical ADHD care leaves room for improvement, study finds

Many pediatricians provide inadequate care for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), relying too heavily on drugs and failing to thoroughly assess kids' symptoms, a new study reports. 

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Psych drugs may harm more than help, author says

Before rushing to medicate people with mental illness, award-winning investigative journalist and author Robert Whitaker advocates another look at what 50 years of research shows: long-term harm may outweigh short-term benefit.

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The Drugging of Child Soldiers

At a time when most kids would be learning algebra, China Keitetsi was already an experienced warrior with many lives on her conscience. Now 27, the former child soldier joined the National Resistance Army in Uganda in the 1980’s, when she was nine years old. There, she was given her fist Uzi. “They gave us weapons, made us fight their war, made us hate, kill, torture, and made us their girlfriends; we had no choice… When I was 14, I gave birth to my son, and when I was 15 years old, I couldn’t count how many officers had already used my body,” she told BBC News earlier this year.

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Could Psychiatric Care Be Causing Suicides?

What is the reason that people are 44.3 times more likely to commit suicide if they’ve visited a psychiatric hospital within the year? AlterNet has published a commentary by Mad In America News Editor Rob Wipond, discussing the implications of a recent Danish study that either found the best predictors of suicide ever identified, or the worst causes of suicide ever identified.

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