Babies on Antipsychotics?!

Kyle, who at 18 months was put on antipsychotic drugs to quell severe temper tantrums

If the kid was having temper tantrums it's because the parent(s) either didn't know how to set boundaries or chose to put work or other self-activities before the kid.

By the time he was 3, the poor kid had been diagnosed with autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia and "oppositional defiant disorder" (um, isn't that a fancy phrase for "normal toddler behavior"?). He was on the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and a pill for attention-deficit disorder.

There is no way anyone can convince me that this kid suffered with all this. It sounds more like poor parenting skills.

I've work with kids with one or more of these so called symptoms and found there was nothing wrong with the kid but with the way the kid was being parented.

Another disturbing nugget of info: A Rutgers University study found that children from low-income families, like Kyle, are four times more likely to receive antipsychotic medicines than children whose parents are privately insured. Why? Because medicating these children is cheaper than asking them to participate in family therapy.

Believable.

I just (literally today) took a three year old of risperdal. Mom had brought child to me for a second opinion after a neurologist was calling this kid as autistic without any formal diagnosis.

He does have some developmental delay, but I think he is probably ADHD and maybe MR but I had a hard time with the fact more benign interventions hadnt been tried

I believe that people need more parenting skills and less medication for their children. Children have rapidly developing brains and we must remember that for most psychiatric medications we still don't know the mechanism of action. We have NO IDEA what effect these drugs will have on a developing brain because those studies have not been done. I would feel very uncomfortable having a child on these medications.

Diane, RN, BSN