The Psychiatric Drugging of Children

April 21st, 2010

Via: Counterpunch:

Of all the harmful actions of modern psychiatry, “the mass diagnosing and drugging of children is the most appalling with the most serious consequences for the future of individual lives and for society,” warns the world-renowned expert, Dr Peter Breggin, often referred to as the “Conscience of Psychiatry.”

“We’re bringing up a generation in this country in which you either sit down, shut up and do what you’re told, or you get diagnosed and drugged,” he points out.

Breggin considers the situation to be “a national tragedy.” “To inflict these drugs on the growing brains of infants and children is wrong and abusive,” he contends.

The kids who get drugged are often our best, brightest, most exciting and energetic children, he points out. “In the long run, we are giving children a very bad lesson that drugs are the answer to emotional problems.”

Dr Nathaniel Lehrman, author of the book, “Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs,” believes that giving infants and toddlers “powerful, brain-effecting psychiatric medication is close to criminal activity.”

“Giving them these drugs,” he says, “has no rationale, and ignores the basic fact that youngsters are very sensitive to their environments, both social and chemical, with the juvenile brain easily damaged by the latter.”

During an interview on ABC Radio National in August 2007, Dr David Healy, the noted British pharmacology expert, and author of the book, “Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder,” told reporter Jane Shields: “Just to give you a feel for how crazy things have actually got recently, it would appear that clinicians in the US are happy to look at the ultrasounds of children in the womb, and based on the fact that they appear to be more overactive at times, and then possibly less active later, they’re prepared to actually consider the possibility that these children could be bipolar.”

Research Credit: SW

One Response to “The Psychiatric Drugging of Children”

  1. tochigi says:

    i know for a fact that even in that far-flung tributary of the American PharmaEmpire, new zealand, children under 10 years who are:
    – not violent
    – not disruptive
    – not antisocial
    – not hyperactive
    – not psychotic
    – upset by the suggestions presented to them by child psychiatrists and become angry

    are prescribed courses of Ritalin.

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