- ISBN-10:
- 0275985229
- ISBN-13:
- 9780275985226
- Pub. Date:
- 01/30/2006
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Academic
- ISBN-10:
- 0275985229
- ISBN-13:
- 9780275985226
- Pub. Date:
- 01/30/2006
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Academic
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Overview
Over the past 15 years, there has been a 300 percent increase in the use of psychotropic medications with girls and boys under the age of 20, and prescriptions for preschoolers have skyrocketed. A stellar group of authors from across disciplines explains this increase, questions the causes, and presents disturbing thoughts regarding this phenomenon as they describe the risks it creates for children. While there are certainly extreme cases where drugs are the only option, medication rather than psychotherapy and counseling has become the first choice for treatment rather than a last resort.
The experts who joined forces for this book take an in-depth look at the conditions that have led to drugging our children, and stress how emotional, social, cultural, and physical environments can both damage and heal young minds. The so-called medical model, one maintaining that psychological disturbance is genetic and thus requires medication, is challenged in this volume. Contributors range from a pediatrician who has testified before Congress and been featured in a Time magazine cover story, to a top child psychiatrist who is an official for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, along with a well-known child psychiatrist, psychologists, environmentalists, and a public policy consultant. This is riveting reading for all who care about the youngest members of society.
Among other issues, this work looks at controversy over whether psychiatric medications are safe or effective for children—and what little we know about their effect on still-developing brains—as well as the role of corporate interests in the increased use of psychotropics for children. Chapters address the role of environment in both causing and curing disorders more and more often diagnosed in our youngsters: from ADHD, depression, and anxiety to eating disorders. The core questions addressed by this sage group of contributors are these: Why are so many children being diagnosed with psychiatric disturbances and given drugs? Why have drugs become the first treatment of choice to deal with those disorders?
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780275985226 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Bloomsbury Academic |
Publication date: | 01/30/2006 |
Series: | Childhood in America |
Edition description: | New Edition |
Pages: | 256 |
Product dimensions: | 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.62(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Introduction, by Sharna OlfmanEnvironments Matter
The Building Blocks of Children's Mental Health: Care and Community, by Sharna Olfman
The Dance of Nature and Nurture: How Environment Impacts Brian Development and Genetic Expression, by Jane M. Healy
Toxic World, Troubled Minds, by Varda Burstyn and David Fenton
Media Violence: The Drug of Choice for Young Males, by John P. Murray
Medical Remodel
Child Psychiatry, Drugs, and the Corporation, by Michael Brody
The Development of Mentally Healthy Children, by Staurt Shanker
Diagnosis, Drugs, and Bipolar Disorder in Children, by Daniel Burston
Pathologies of Normalcy
Running on Ritalin: Children, Society, and Performance on the Pill by Lawrence Diller
Why Medications Aren't Enough: Looking More Deeply at Depression and Anxiety in Children, by Molly Burke
Global Girls, Consumer Culture, and Eating Disorders, by Margo Maine
Series Afterword, by Sharna Olfman
About the Editors and Contributors
About the Series Advisors
What People are Saying About This
"Sharna Olfman has masterfully edited this extraordinary volume that critically examines our nation's gullible faith in drugs as the treatment of choice for the rising tide of American children and youths diagnosed with mental illness. Through compelling statistics, wide-ranging research evidence, and poignant case examples, a renowned cast of contributing authors expose the clinical, industrial, and social conditions that have led to unwarranted drugging of our children. The chapters offer an incisive reminder that family, community, and societal supports combine with biology and are crucial for the development of every mentally healthy human child. The clarity, passion, and power of the authors' writing strengthen their vital message. A MUST READ for parents, mental health professionals, and policy makers, and a forceful call to action."
"This is a must read for anybody interested in the health and welfare of children....In ten compelling, often chilling, articles, helpfully organized and introduced by Dr. Olfman, the various authors, leaders in their respective fields, and drawn from a number of disciplines, demonstrate how a medical establishment obsessed with finding genetic causes rountinely obfuscates environmental factors, and how a pharmaceutical industry obsessed with profits only sees self-interested opportunity in the suffering of children."
"An important book raising critical concerns about childhood, drugs, and how unfettered corporate interests combine with the romance of a quick fix to undermine children's health."
"Children in America are being given psychotropic medications at an ever-increasing rate, driven by the fashionable diagnoses like bipolar disorder. No Child Left Different charts the emergence of this phenomenon. The contributors grapple with the issues in a nuanced and constructive way rather than simply express their horror. But the bottom line is that the book labels what is happening as a folly in the classical meaning of the wordsomething that was or could have been recognized to be a mistake at the time it was happening. Follies can be amusing and harmless, but this one has the dimensions of a tragedy."