The Medicated Child
The Medicated Child is a very effective documentary about Bipolar and ADHD. I highlight many points of the program and add in a little opinion of my own after the break.
PBS Frontline PBS 2008
The Medicated ChildClick here to watch the full program online at http://video.pbs.org.
Some notes about the program
6:15 After 24 hours they said he has bipolar(eek). He is four? How could you know that?
13:00 Doctor for medicine using best guesses? Thats not good enough concerning the health of a person.
14:32 Calling medication the only treatments. This is a dangerous and not true.
17:00 Tamper tantrums in kids are not the same as in adults. They are pretty normal.
18:00 Pediatricians and General Practitioners doing the diagnosis when they don't know what they are doing. They are not experts in the find of child psychology.
19:00 I experience terror by seeing him twitch. I twitched when coming down from Ritalin in the evenings.
19:40 Eight medications for a child? He isn't dying and in intensive care. There is no reason for that.
21:00 They don't understand the impact of medications.
22:00 Bipolar looks like so many other things. Then maybe it is other things?
22:47 In the interview a kid being a kid. Telling a silly story about taking off heads. If you see it on TV it isn't a delusion. It is you being a kid and telling stories about the world you see around you.
24:34 Doctor enticing and even rewarding her for talking about busting heads open.
25:00 Upset cause she is a teen now. Worried about a bully, stress at home, father in Iraq. Not Bipolar! Just a kid with stress.
26:00 Doctor giving more medicine but nothing else. No counseling or any other treatment.
26:18 The tragedy is that she thinks medication is the only thing that makes her like she is "supposed to be." I thought that way too. Until I realized that I was just fine the way I am.
27:36 The government and the industry are not generating the studies and data to know about safety. Yet they are still allowing these medication to be prescribed.
28:30 They say they can't do studies in children cause they are sacred.
29:50 They know that many drugs that work in adults do not work well in children.
30:14 They knew that few trials show positive effects in children.
31:00 They know that these drugs can cause suicide in kids.
34:23 absense of information. "when there is no data, we can't tell em." but they allow them to sell.
36:18 Parents say: "We don't support medicating. but the doctors tells us this is what we need to do." They follow the doctors advice because the doctors is the ultimate opinion for help and they need help desperately. Most often you will listen to whatever the doctors say.
36:49 "Is there anything not medication that we can do? classes anything?" The doctors responds "99% medication." To make use of behaviour training won't work while he has the problems." This is the absolute worst part of this program. The doctor shuts down any other avenues of treatment. Even when asked he shuts out the hope for the child and the parents.
39:30 Doctor thinks he can give meds before they even have a problem. What are you trying to solve by creating the problems that medications can cause?
48:15 A new way of doing studies that follows the model from childhood cancer. Every child that gets treatment is part of a study.
50:00 He wants to be on the lowest meds he can.
52:20 Do you think she will grow out of it? "no" have to take meds forever. The fact that they think she will need need medication for the rest of her life is hard for me to hear. If she becomes an adult that there is a chance she will not need the medication anymore. It is possible she will be just fine with maturity. There is a chance that she will not have adult bipolar. Hope for that chance!
My Comments on The Medicated Child
In The Medicated Child it freaks me out to see all these adults, these doctors , these experts freely admitting that they don't know what they are doing. Yet they do it anyway. The effects on the patients a distant concern to them.The Medicated Child program is one of the prime motivators I had to start ADHDaction.com. It shows too much bad treatment. I could't sit back and let this happen to yet another kid. Unilateral treatments are unfair to the patients. I discuss a ways to use medication and other ADHD treatments to make progress all over this site. This documentary is about Bipolar and my focus is ADHD. ADHD and Bipolar can be closely related but they are different. I am skeptical about Bipolar in children. I think it is often just kids being kids. Bipolar in adults is a very drastic and hard thing to deal with. I just hope that parents and kids that are struggling with behaviour problems will get the full spectrum of help that they need. Like this site? Please share this ADHD site.
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