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Overuse of medication to treat children’s behavioural issues causes concern
For more information and BBC radio programme sound tracks.
Overuse of medication to treat children’s behavioural issues causes concern
Prescriptions of amphetamines for children have increased nearly sixty fold in the decade leading to 2004 and 120 fold from 1994 to 2009*and this is causing ongoing concern amongst educational and child psychologists as the exponential trend has continued to the present day. (750,000 in 2009 costing the NHS £31 million, from the NHS Business Services Authority, May 11th 2010, Mail on Line.)
Chartered Educational Psychologist Dave Traxson will discuss this and other factors that appear to show an alarming reliance on medicating children who are perceived to have mental health issues during his presentation today, Thursday 13th January, at the Division of Educational and Child psychology annual conference being held at Hilton Hotel, Newcastle Gateshead.
A major concern of Dave Traxson is that over the last 20 years an unhealthy, profit motivated, business alliance has been forged between pharmaceutical companies and some other key stakeholders such as some psychiatrists and some key researchers.
Dave Traxson states that: “I feel the time is right to challenge the growing practice of medicating our children for displaying behaviours and thought processes that until recently would have fallen within the normal range. This pathologisation of normal responses to often demanding situations for children, is in my view insidious and pervasive at this time and threatens to produce a collective societal shift of perspective about childhood which can only be detrimental in the longer term.”
What message as a society do we want to send to the future about the way we have chosen to treat our children with behavioural differences today?
“The aim of pharmaceutical companies is to colonise these conditions purely for financial gain and they have popularised the idea that many problems are caused by suggested imbalances in brain chemicals which drives further consumption of their products. As professionals working with children this causes us great concern and we feel a national review of these worrying practices must be undertaken.”
Another concern is the imminent arrival of DSM5 (the diagnostic criteria taking over from DSM4 currently often used by U.K. medics) from America in 2013 which is funded by the drug companies and is a reason for an urgent national review to be undertaken. It will change mental health conditions to spectrum conditions by definitions such as, “sub-clinical, normal variation bi-polar disorder or autism.”
To lay people this would imply a low level condition but drug companies are pushing their own financial agenda by wanting these categories to be diagnosed and also to be medicated.
To conclude, Dave Traxson calls this practice as a society, “collective insanity,” stating, “It is a systemic failure of the greatest order when healthy children with behavioural differences are selected by dubious pseudo-scientific means for long-term medication. We know that it can potentially damage areas of their brains for the rest of their life and possibly increase drug dependency in adulthood. Further impartial research on both these issues is essential to inform our practice in the future.”
Key points about the over-prescription of psychotropic drugs for children.
1) The beneficial effects of drug treatments in general are due to the toxic effect of the drug's chemical constituents, and so it is essential that we understand the "Balance of Risk" of particular treatments before they are used with vulnerable young children whose brains and bodies are at formative stages of development.
2) There is increasingly powerful evidence that amphetamines have a cumulative effect causing a toxic build up of Dopamine in the brain's synapses, which can cause long term structural damage and produce a range of clearly adverse reactions such as tremors and mood changes .
3) The "Meaning" that is construed from the actions of adults by children needs to be fully considered. Does a child construe a drug intervention as helpful or disempowering? Worse still does it compromise their trust in key adults and result in powerful pejorative labels, resulting in damage to their self-esteem?
4) The evidence is clear, in a recent report from the Sutton Trust Charity (October 2010) that disadvantaged groups such as the lowest twenty percent socio-economically of the population and Looked After Children have at least double the risk of being identified with significant behavioural difficulties including the ADHD diagnosis, whether that is appropriate or not. There is also a post code lottery for diagnosis which conclusively disproves the epidemic hypothesis . Why would the wealthy area of the Wirral have highest level of a biologically based problem at twice the rate of areas like the disadvantaged Stoke on Trent? Surrey falls close behind the Wirral. This proves that this is undoubtedly a socially constructed phenomenon.
5) Parental evidence is increasingly skewed by the financial incentives of generous Disabled Living Allowance payments (£300 or £600 monthly per child) which many professionals have concerns about. Diagnosis should not rely so heavily on parental perceptions and reports as it does at present via dubiously scientific and poorly constructed checklists.
6) It is obvious that financial drivers and company business plans predominate in relation to societal responses to this issue and that drug company profits are put before the common sense resolution of the situation by the creative thinking of those involved on a day to day basis with the children.(As suggested in the NICE guidelines)
7) The Safeguarding of children is achieved by other related professionals such as child psychologists challenging prescribing practice that they have ethical concerns about following their own profession’s Code of Practice and Ethics.
8) Safeguarding of children in it’s broadest sense has to be our shared top priority, as emphasised continuously by our respective Directors of Children’s Services.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Kathryn McCullagh, Press Officer, British Psychological Society T: 0116 2529908 E: k.mccullagh@bps.org.uk
Editors Notes
*The rise initially was from 6,000 in 1994 to 345,000 in 2004. (NHS statistics in The Times, July 28th 2005)
These views expressed are the personal views of Dave Traxson and not those of his employer or the British Psychological Society.
Findings also published in:
“The Medicalisation of Healthy Chilhood,” Every Child Journal,volume 1.5,July 2010.
“The Medicalisation of Normal Healthy Childhood,” The B.P.S.Debate,Edition 136,September2010.
"Drugging our Children,"in School Leadership, vol 2.5, November 2010.
The Association of Educational Psychologists ,Keynote address,November 12th 2010,Liverpool.
Date: 6th January 2011
Ref: PR1828
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