Psychiatric Drugs for Children

In this project we do not encourage children to take medications because

most often drugs are counter-productive as they "prevent from thinking clearly and divert attention away from personal issues and concerns. When the drugs are stopped patients' attention often return to the unresolved concerns" (reflections from a humanist physician in the book Cry of the Invisible).

"The neuroleptic drugs are generally thought to have greatly helped the victims of schizophrenia, but in reality they have not helped but rather

harmed all the people with this diagnosis. They have done their harm in two ways :

- first because of direct damage to the brain and to mental functions,

- secondly because they are tied together with false and abhorrent views of human problems and human beings.

The drugs have promoted a false definition of schizophrenia as a medical problem with a medical solution. They have prevented us from taking our responsibility. As a consequence people with schizophrenia have been abandoned, most of these young and often gifted people would have been able, like the rest of us, to realize many of the promises and possibilities of their lives. The blindness of psychiatry to the evil effects of its own deeds is as blatant as it is tragic and cruel" (Dr L. Martensson, M. D.).

"The medication of children becomes a coercive response to conflict in which the weakest member of the conflict -the child- is drugged into a more compliant or submissive state. The production of drug-induced obsessive-compulsive disorder in the child especially fits the needs for compliance in regard to otherwise boring or distressing schoolwork" (Dr Peter R. Breggin' s testimony before the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Psychiatric Drugging of Children for Behavior Control, September 29th, 2000).

Also, recent studies have raised official concern that drugging children may prepare them to be future drug addicts when they become young adults and feel medications do not help them, then they turn to illegal drugs as the only possible source of relief from internal disturbances.

Similarly, some people who use illegal drugs thru intraveinous injections were found to have suffered as young children traumas when hospitalized : when having been needle shot as part of a routine medical treatment. These traumas were not integrated in their personality, which later drove them to compulsively re-enact the physical pain experienced in their body pierced by

a steel needle immediately followed by a dramatic change in their mental condition from the chemical intake.

"Society is becoming increasingly dependent on prescription drugs to solve psychological and social problems. Physicians in almost every specialty are quick to prescribe psychiatric medications. But your decision to accept it for you or your child may lead to a life-time of drug use, including exposure to long term mental, emotional or physical harmful effects" (Dr Peter R. Breggin, M. D.).

Nevertheless this project is not exactly a drug-free program as the last say is left to the children themselves. But the need to take medications is an other indicator that some therapeutic work still needs to be done as the young person who asks for them has not yet reached the point of enjoying a good mental condition inside : the need for an intoxicant indicates that disturbances are still experienced inside ("intoxicant" : any substance that modify the mental condition of a person).

But we will inform the prescribing practitioner if the child is suffering from overdosing or from harmful side effects.

Overdrugging of children in the U.S. :

From CBS TV report in 2006, statistics show that in the course of only 10 years, psychotropic drugs that children in the US had to take increased 500%, given as young as babies, and frequently several different drugs were given at the same time, up to seven of them !

Some children when having been forced to absorb so many toxic chemicals went into epileptic seizures, their body being shocked by the harmful cocktails.

These large scale medical abuses go unchecked because they are considered a matter of health. Actually, such "treatments" deteriorate the mental and physical health of children, some causing irreversible mental or physical disabilities as the body and brain of children are in full growth and as such are more vulnerable to damage than adults.

Also, quantities prescribed can be excessive :

- either for example 4 folds the prescribed dosage

- either quantities that are designed for adults

while efficiency of such medications has never been proven.

The overall motivation for such negative trends in the US at the national level is for the pharmaceutical industry and prescribing physicians to maintain or increase their profit.

rev. 2015