Some people are starting to wake up to the problems with psychiatric drugs. As seen in the Worcester Telgram & Gazette
If it’s possible to see a silver lining in the death of a 4-year-old child, it’s that more attention is being paid to what those on the front lines have long considered a scandal: the overmedication of American kids.
The horrific death of Rebecca Riley from an overdose of prescription drugs has raised troubling questions, many centered around the ease in which young people are medicated for a host of “disorders” that were once considered emotional rites of passage: active kids are now diagnosed with ADHD; teenagers who are happy one day and sad the next are now considered bipolar.
By one judge’s estimate, more than half of the teens who come before her in Worcester Juvenile Court are on some kind of medication, and a “huge number” have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she said.
“We’ve had requests from DSS to allow children as young as 4 to be medicated with powerful anti-psychotic drugs,” said Judge Carol A. Erskine, First Justice of Worcester Juvenile Court, long a critic of psychiatrists and others who are too quick to medicate young people. “I continue to be concerned with the use of powerful medications, intended for adults, that are used on kids. Some children are so aggressive and assaultive that they can only be treated with drugs. But my concern is that medication is now the first choice in the treatment of children.”
Little Rebecca Riley appears to have been the sad victim of a perfect storm for sure disaster: dysfunctional parents, a psychiatrist who apparently never saw a pill she didn’t like; and a state agency too overburdened to safeguard every child who needs protection from her own family. By now the sorry facts have been widely disseminated: Rebecca’s parents were charged last week with murdering their daughter with an intentionally lethal overdose of Clonidine, one of three medications prescribed for the girl’s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder. The psychiatrist who prescribed the drugs has surrendered her medical license while officials probe the death. The tragic case has made child medication a hot topic, and state lawmakers plan to hold hearings to discuss whether kids are being over-prescribed.
We can save them some time by noting that the answer, clearly, is yes.
For Nicole Ferguson, a 32-year-old mother from Spencer, the story of Rebecca Riley may read like a cautionary tale. Ms. Ferguson’s daughter, 8-year-old Morgan, has been on medication since she was diagnosed with ADHD when she was just 3 years old. Two years ago, she was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder and takes Risperdal, an antipsychotic medication also used to treat schizophrenia. She also takes pills that help her sleep.
“My daughter has some bad behavioral problems,” said Ms. Ferguson, who said her family is involved with DSS. “She screams, she yells, she’s fidgety, she can’t sit still. She’s just like a ping-pong ball, bouncing back and forth.”
Two months ago, Ms. Ferguson took her daughter to a psychiatric nurse who prescribed Tenox, a powerful hypnotic drug commonly used for insomnia and other serious sleep disorders. On Jan. 24, Ms. Ferguson said she gave her daughter a pill and sent her to Lake Street School. That day, the school nurse called and said Morgan was so tired she couldn’t walk down the stairs. By the time her father raced to the school to pick her up, Morgan was “out cold” and wouldn’t wake up, her mother said. She slept through the night and finally awakened the next day.
When she called the psychiatric nurse, the nurse insisted that she instructed Ms. Ferguson to give her daughter half of a pill, even though Ms. Ferguson said the written instructions provided by the nurse called for a full pill.
“The bottom line is that I gave my daughter too much medication and I feel terrible,” Ms. Ferguson said. “My child goes from drug to drug to drug, and I hate it. But I don’t know what to do. Doctors are really quick to fix everything with medicine.”
Sheree Jolicoeur has been school nurse at Lake Street for 13 years. She said she sees the need for Morgan and other children to be on medication, but said that it’s often difficult to adjust and monitor the meds to keep them effective.
“I do think we have a tendency to give children an awful lot of medication,” she said. “We medicate them and then expect them to have perfect behavior. We forget that they’re children. Everything we do with medication is trial and error.”
According to a study last year at Brandeis University, psychotropic drug prescriptions for teenagers skyrocketed 250 percent between 1994 and 2001. The study showed that by 2001, one in every 10 of all office visits by teenage boys led to a prescription for a psychotropic drug. Other findings show that a diagnosis of ADHD was given in about one-third of office visits during the study period.
Some say the numbers reflect a better understanding of mental disorders among young people and better screening procedures. Others, such as Judge Erskine, worry that we’re witnessing what she calls “the medicalization of childhood.”
It shouldn’t have taken the tragic death of a 4-year-old child to generate the debate now under way. But at least it’s happening. And while there’s plenty of blame to go around for the short, sad life of Rebecca Riley, let’s hope that the focus remains on preventing future tragedies, and examining whether too many kids are getting too many drugs.
“It’s a big topic,” said Ms. Jolicoeur. “It’s a big topic in the schools. It should be a big topic everywhere.”
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