American children are more than three times likely to be prescribed psychotropic medication than children in Europe and that is certainly troubling.
Every year more than 200 million drug prescriptions are written for children and teenagers in the U.S., according to California’s Board of Pharmacy.
In any two-week period in the United States, 13 million children take a prescription medication. And over 6 million of them are taking drug prescriptions for chronic diseases, like asthma, epilepsy, attention deficit disorders, arthritis, and diabetes which are the top five diseases that children take medications for.
The amount of drug prescriptions being given to U.S. children is outrageous. Compared to children in other countries, U.S. children are taking three times more drug prescriptions like antidepressants and stimulants and up to double the amount of antipsychotic than kids in some other countries.
The U.S. culture seems to encourage drugged up children. From a very young age, sometimes even before they leave the hospital at birth, kids are given medicine. Antibiotic drugs for colds and ear infections are prescribed (even though they don’t work for that purpose) plus pills for indigestion, fever, headaches and the flu.
Kids are taught that in order to "cure illness" they need to go to the doctor and get a prescription. Or they need to go to the corner drug store and get some liquid gel-cap to cure illness.
What makes matters worse, kids are exposed to TV commercials, some with animated characters and talking animals, pedaling drugs to their parents and sometimes directly to teens.
Now it’s widely accepted that drugging our children is state mandated, forced medication has become a growing trend.
There was a case, without the presence of a doctor, where a court decided to put a 6-year-old child with mild autism on five powerful antipsychotic drugs, even though none of drugs had been approved by the FDA for use in children. Sadly, the mother begged them not to do it.
Now besides the mind-altering drugs, young kids are prescribed many other unnecessary drugs to get a good nights sleep, heartburn medication or
statin drugs to lower cholesterol.
What the problem is here, none of these drugs address the real cause of the problem. Most all of these ailments are easily overcome if you change lifestyle habits.
It’s really a shame, that instead of the doctor writing a prescription for a child’s ailment, the parent should help the child change lifestyle habits, which would be a much better remedy. A better diet, daily exercise, additional healthy nutrients added to the diet and even relieving stress could be the very things that would improve the child’s condition.
But you have to understand doctors were not trained to do that in medical school. They never got enough education in medical school to be nutrition smart at all. Couple that with the fact they get tremendous pressure put on them by their professional organization plus the over-whelming pressure they get from the drug companies, and you see why this happens.
Here’s a strong warning I recommend to all parents. Please don’t let this happen to your child. Take a stand about how your child should be treated and cared for and stick to what is good for your child before your child’s life is ruined forever.
About the author:
Sonny grew up in a family business. After 29 years he left it to pursue a career in sales. After retirement he became interested in the Internet. He built some websites dealing with self-help issues and then his interest turned to health issues. You can retrieve his new free health ebook at: http://freehealthebook.homestead.com
