Egregious over prescribing

There is a lot to be upset about in today’s world.  But an article in today’s New York Times is so revealing about the egregious overuse of pharmaceuticals that we should all be horrified.  The child was eighteen months old and put on powerful drugs.  Where is the accountability?  Where in the article does the journalist look at ties the doctors might have had to drug companies? 

OPELOUSAS, La. — At 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking
a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’s severe tantrums.
Thus began a troubled toddler’s journey from one doctor to another,
from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs. Autism,
bipolar disorder, hyperactivity,
insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder. The boy’s daily pill regimen
multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac,
two sleeping medicines and one for attention-deficit disorder. All by the time he was 3.
He was sedated, drooling and overweight from the side effects of the medicine. Although his mother,
Brandy Warren, had been at her “wit’s end” when she resorted to the drug treatment, she began to worry about Kyle’s altered personality. “All I had was a medicated
little boy,” Warren said. “I didn’t have my son. It’s like, you’d look into his eyes and you would just see just blankness.”
Today, 6-year-old Kyle is in his fourth week of first grade, scoring high marks on his first tests. He is rambunctious and much thinner. Weaned off the drugs through a program affiliated with Tulane University that is aimed at helping
low-income families whose children have mental health problems,
Kyle now laughs easily.
Kyle’s new doctors point to his remarkable progress — and a more common diagnosis of attention-
deficit hyperactivity disorder
— as proof that he should have never been prescribed such powerful
drugs in the first place.
Kyle now takes one drug,
Vyvanse, for his attention deficit. His mother shared his medical records to help document a trend that some psychiatric experts say they are finding increasingly worrisome: ready prescription-writing by doctors of more potent drugs to treat extremely young children whose conditions rarely require such measures.
More than 500,000 children and adolescents in America are now taking antipsychotic drugs. Their use is growing not only among teenagers, when schizophrenia is believed to emerge, but also among tens of thousands of preschoolers.
“There are too many children getting on too many of these drugs too soon,” Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor
of clinical psychiatry, said.
Such radical treatments are indeed
needed, some doctors and experts say, to help young children
with severe problems stay safe and in school or day care. In 2006, the F.D.A. did approve treating children as young as 5 with Risperdal if they had autistic disorder, self-injury tendencies, tantrums or severe mood swings. Two other drugs — Seroquel and Abilify — are permitted for youths 10 or older with bipolar disorder.
But many doctors say prescribing
them for younger and younger children may pose risks to development
of both their fast-growing brains and their bodies. Doctors can legally prescribe them for off-label use, even though research has not shown them to be safe or effective for children. Boys are far more likely to be medicated than girls, and foster care children also seem to be medicated more often.
Dr. Ben Vitiello, chief of child and adolescent treatment at the National Institute of Mental Health, says conditions in young children are extremely difficult to diagnose properly because of their emotional variability.
“This is a recent phenomenon, in large part driven by the misperception
that these agents are safe and well tolerated,” he said.
In the last few years, doctors’ concerns have led some states, like Florida and California, to put in place restrictions on doctors who want to prescribe antipsychotics for young children, especially for those on Medicaid. Some states now report prescriptions are declining
as a result. The F.D.A. has also strengthened warnings about using some of these drugs in treating
children. DUFF WILSON