Bad Therapy Step 7: Drug ‘Em.
First comes diagnose, then comes medicate. But if Lexapro, Ritalin, and Adderall were the solution, the decline in youth mental health would have ended decades ago.
Altering your child's brain chemistry is about as profound a decision as you'll ever make as a parent. But for many child psychiatrists and far too many pediatricians, it involves little more than a pro forma signature and tearing off a sheet gummed to a prescription pad.
Steven Hollon holds a named professorship in psychology at Vanderbilt University, where he studies the etiology and treatment of depres-sion. "You want to be very careful starting children and adolescents on antidepressants," he told me. He's even more adamant about antianxiety medicines like Xanax and Klonopin. "Anything that makes you feel better within thirty minutes is going to be at least psychologically and physiologically addictive, and it probably is going to be both."
If you read “The Collapse of Parenting,” by Leonard Sax, a real physician, he describes the same issue, where parents are looking for a quick fix for their child and are just seeking a prescription to solve the problem. The real problem is exactly what the title of his book is - The Collapse of Parenting.
When you don’t put your trust in Allah, you will feel empty inside, and you will never be able to deal with what life throws at you. Whatever happened to saying "Bismillahi, tawakkaltu 'alallah, wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah," which translates to "In the name of Allah, I place my trust in Allah, and there is no power or might except with Allah?"
I used to dispense these medications on a daily basis to many young teenagers, and each prescription comes with a mandatory handout describing all of the risks of many antidepressants, with a lot of side effects ironically being the exact opposite of what the drug is meant to cure. The number one problem to look out for with antidepressants?
A black box warning that tells you - an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, particularly in children and adolescents.
Even if your child doesn’t experience this side effect, the damage that can happen can last a lifetime:
But possibly the grimmest risk of antidepressants, antianxiety meds, and stimulants is the primary effect of the drugs themselves: placing a young person in a medicated state while he's still getting used to the feel and fit of his own skin. Making him feel less like himself, blocking him from ever feeling the thrill of unmediated cognitive sharpness, the sting of righteous fury, an animal urge to spot an opportunity—a romance, a position, a place on the team-and leap for it. Compelling him to play remote spectator in his own life.
Many adults, accustomed to popping a Xanax to get through a rough patch, are tempted to extend that same accommodation to their suffering teen. But the impact of starting a child on psychotropic medication is incomparably different. Every experience of a child's life—so many "firsts" —will now be mediated by this chemical chaperone: every triumph, every pang of desire and remorse. When you start a child on meds, you risk numbing him to life at the very moment he's learning to calibrate risks and handle life's ups and downs. When you anesthetize a child to the vicissitudes of success and failure and love and loss and disappointment when he's meeting these for the first time, you're depriving him of the emotional musculature he'll need as an adult. Once on meds, he's likely to believe that he can't handle life at full strength — and thanks to an adolescence spent on them, he may even be right.
If you can relieve your child's anxiety, depression, or hyperactivity without starting her on meds, it's worth turning your life upside down to do so.
Quotes from Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up