Saturday, May 3, 2008

Frontline: The Medicated Child

This documentary was just sickening. Some of these poor children were on ten mind altering drugs. They showed film of the behavior that caused these poor children to put on this stuff, it did not seem that bad. They put some poor child on amphetamines, antidepressants, maybe few more drugs to deal with the side effects of the first two. And a high dose of a strong sleeping pill every night is need to sleep because of the other drugs.

They show a film of a five year girl talking non-stop and jumping around. They said the girl was delusional and thought she could do anything. Good grief, this is a five year old they are talking about. She looked like a happy little girl to me. The girl is started mind altering drugs, next we see the same girl age 12 very sad, quiet and gloomy looking. She is being bullied at school and her father is in Iraq, so the physician upped the dosage of the drugs.

One of the children had nervous tick caused by one of the drugs he was on for years, a new physician takes him off the drug the tick did not go away. The physician said they often do not. He was on ten drugs; he had been cut down to four. This poor child just looked damaged.

Frontline’s “The Medicated Child”.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/

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