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PBS Frontline: The Medicated Child_Tuesday Jan 8

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FYI

On Tuesday, Jan. 8, at 9:00 PM (Eastern), 10:00 PM
(Pacific), Public Broadcasting System will examine the most
controversial issue in American healthcare: why are more
than 6 million American children being forced to take
powerful, toxic psychiatric drugs--some starting as young
as two years old?

Is it good medicine? What's the evidence to support the
practice?

The program promises to examine what many psychiatrists are
beginning to acknowledge: American children are being
subjected to an uncontrolled high risk experiment. Millions
of American children are being prescribed the most toxic
brain damaging drugs--with absolutely no scientific
evidence of a therapeutic benefit to support the practice.

The increasing use of antipsychotic drugs for children is
correlated with an inexplicable epidemic in American
children being "diagnosed" as bipolar, an unprecedented
diagnosis in children. Bipolar just happens to be an FDA
approved use for antipsychotic drugs.

So, the marked increased rates of bipolar diagnoses in
children over the last five to seven years appears to be a
case of the drugs prompting the diagnosis.  

Indeed,  as Dr. Steven Hyman, a neuroscientist and former
director of the National Institute of Mental Health,
acknowledges, those diagnoses are unsupported by scientific
evidence.

Psychiatry's sling-shot prescribing practices rely on an
irresponsible dictum: shoot first, ask questions years
after major harm has been done.

Such a cowboy mentality has led to a market-driven chemical
assault on our children.

Children's fears, cries, and anxieties, are being muffled
with toxic drugs that undermine their mental and physical
health.

Psychiatrists who are financially invested in expanding the
market are diverting parents' attention from the lack of
science and the drugs' harmful effects.

Hopefully, viewers will wake up to the fact that America's
children are the target of psychopharmacological abuse.

There is no credible scientific evidence demonstrating a
therapeutic benefit from antipsychotics. These drugs' most
prominent effect is somnolence.

How many children--like four-year old Rebecca Riley-- will
be sacrificed before this lethal paradigm of "treatment" in
psychiatry is halted?

Is bad medicine any better just because it is promoted by
influential Harvard University child psychiatrists ?

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/

FRONTLINE EXAMINES WHY MORE THAN 6 MILLION AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE TAKING
POWERFUL PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS

FRONTLINE presents
THE MEDICATED CHILD
Tuesday, January 8, 2008, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS

Ten years ago, stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall were
the drugs of choice to treat behavioral issues in children.
Today, children as young as four years old are being
prescribed more powerful anti-psychotic medications that
are much less understood. The drugs can cause serious side
effects and virtually nothing is known about their long-
term impact.

The increase in the use of anti-psychotics is directly tied
to the rising incidence of one particular diagnosis -
bipolar disorder. Experts estimate that the number of kids
with the diagnosis is now over a million and rising.

In recent years, there's been a dramatic increase in the
number of children being diagnosed with serious psychiatric
disorders and prescribed medications that are just
beginning to be tested in children. The drugs can cause
serious side effects, and virtually nothing is known about
their long-term impact. "It's really to some extent an
experiment, trying medications in these children of this
age," child psychiatrist Dr. Patrick Bacon tells FRONTLINE.
"It's a gamble. And I tell parents there's no way to know
what's going to work."

In The Medicated Child, airing Tuesday, January 8, 2008, at
9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE producer
Marcela Gaviria confronts psychiatrists, researchers and
government regulators about the risks and benefits of
prescription drugs for troubled children. The biggest
current controversy surrounds the diagnosis of bipolar
disorder. Formerly called manic depression, bipolar
disorder was long believed to exist only in adults, but, in
the mid-1990s, bipolar in children began to be diagnosed at
much higher rates, sometimes in kids as young as 4 years
old. "The rates of bipolar diagnoses in children have
increased markedly in many communities over the last five
to seven years," says Dr. Steven Hyman, a former director
of the National Institute of Mental Health. "I think the
real question is, are those diagnoses right? And in truth,
I don't think we yet know the answer."

Like many of the 1 million children now diagnosed with
bipolar, 5-year-old Jacob Solomon was initially believed to
suffer from an attention deficit disorder. His parents
reluctantly started him on Ritalin, but over the next five
years, Jacob would be put on one drug after another. "It
all started to feel out of control," Jacob's father, Ron,
told FRONTLINE. "Nobody ever said we can work with this
through therapy and things like that. Everywhere we looked
it was, 'Take meds, take meds, take meds.'"

Over the years, Jacob's multiple medications have helped
improve his mood, but they've also left him with a severe
tic in his neck which doctors are having trouble fully
explaining. "We're dealing with developing minds and
brains, and medications have a whole different impact in
the young developing child than they do in an adult," says
Dr. Marianne Wamboldt, the chief of psychiatry at Denver
Children's Hospital. "We don't understand that impact very
well. That's where we're still in the Dark Ages."

DJ Koontz was diagnosed with bipolar at 4 years old, after
his temper tantrums became more frequent and explosive. He
was recently prescribed powerful antipsychotic drugs. "It
is a little worrisome to me because he is so young," says
DJ's mother, Christine. "If he didn't take it, though, I
don't know if we could function as a family. It's almost a
do-or-die situation over here." DJ's medicines seem to be
helping him in the short run, but the longer-term outlook
is still uncertain. "What's not really clear is whether
many of the kids who are called bipolar have anything
that's related to this very well-studied disorder in
adults," says Thomas Insel, the director of the National
Institute for Mental Health. "It's not clear that people
with that adult illness started with what we're now calling
bipolar in children. Nor is it clear that the kids who have
this disorder are going to grow up to have what we used to
call manic-depressive illness in adulthood."

While some urge caution when it comes to bipolar in
children, FRONTLINE talks with others who argue that we
should intervene with drug treatments at even younger ages
for children genetically predisposed to the disorder. "The
theory is that if you get in early, before the first full
mood episode, then perhaps we can delay the onset to full
mania," says Dr. Kiki Chang of Stanford University. "And if
that's the case, perhaps finding the right medication early
on can protect a brain so that these children never do
progress to full bipolar disorder."

FRONTLINE's 2001 documentary Medicating Kids can be watched
online at

www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/medicating

The Medicated Child is a FRONTLINE co-production with RAINMedia, Inc. The
writer and producer is Marcela Gaviria. The co-producer is Will Cohen.

FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast
nationwide on PBS.

Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of
PBS viewers. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by The
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Additional
funding is provided by the Park Foundation. FRONTLINE is
closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and
described for people who are blind or visually impaired by
the Media Access Group at WGBH.

FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. The
executive producer of FRONTLINE is David Fanning.

pbs.org/pressroom
Promotional photography can be downloaded from the PBS
pressroom.

Press contacts
Diane Buxton
(617) 300-5375
diane_buxton@wgbh.org

Alissa Rooney
(617) 300-5314
alissa_rooney@wgbh.org

Phil Zimmerman
(617) 300-5366
phil_zimmerman@wgbh.org

GET THE HTML POSTCARD to send to public health policy
officials:

outreach_frontline@wgbh.org

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