A teen prescribed 14 psychiatric drugs by age 18 describes a prescription cascade that worsened her condition.Federal officials are now launching a plan to curb overprescribing, especially in children.Medicaid data shows children on ADHD drugs are far more likely to be prescribed additional psychiatric medications.Critics argue pills cannot teach emotional regulation or replace behavioral therapy.Former patients report no medical road map for safely discontinuing psychiatric medications.
Federal officials are now launching a plan to curb overprescribing, especially in children.Medicaid data shows children on ADHD drugs are far more likely to be prescribed additional psychiatric medications.Critics argue pills cannot teach emotional regulation or replace behavioral therapy.Former patients report no medical road map for safely discontinuing psychiatric medications.
Medicaid data shows children on ADHD drugs are far more likely to be prescribed additional psychiatric medications.Critics argue pills cannot teach emotional regulation or replace behavioral therapy.Former patients report no medical road map for safely discontinuing psychiatric medications.
Critics argue pills cannot teach emotional regulation or replace behavioral therapy.Former patients report no medical road map for safely discontinuing psychiatric medications.
Former patients report no medical road map for safely discontinuing psychiatric medications.
The psychiatric medication machine is churning faster than ever, and a growing chorus of voices from former patients to federal health officials is asking whether the cure has become the disease.At 14, Laura Delano sat in a psychiatrist's office and heard words that would shape the next decade and a half of her life. After a single appointment, the doctor told her she had bipolar disorder and would need medication forever. What followed was a "prescription cascade" â two drugs became three, then four, then five, including Prozac, Depakote, lithium, Abilify and Effexor. Her condition only worsened."The more medications I took and the more diagnoses I accumulated, the more my life fell apart," Delano recently told "The Secretary Kennedy Podcast."Delano's story is a window into a system that now has 6.1 million American children under 17 taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to a December 2025 report. The same system, critics argue, too often substitutes pills for genuine care, leaving patients sicker and more dependent than when they started."No road map" for getting off the drugsDelano said she never questioned her treatment until 2010, when involuntary psychiatric interventions shattered her "unquestioning faith" in the system. Around the same time, she read Robert Whitaker'sAnatomy of an Epidemic, which questioned whether long-term psychiatric drug use may worsen outcomes.The realization was life-changing. "What if it's not treatment-resistant mental illness? What if it's the treatment?" she recalled thinking.But discontinuing the medications proved nearly impossible. "I had no road map. My doctors didn't support it. They had no idea how to do it," Delano said. She described patients using water mixtures and syringes to make tiny dose reductions, calling it "the wild, wild west out there."She later founded the Inner Compass Initiative to offer peer support for those questioning psychiatric medications.Federal intervention targets overprescribingThe issue has reached the highest levels of government. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a new action plan this month to curb psychiatric overprescribing, particularly among children."Today, we take clear and decisive action to confront our nation's mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications," Kennedy said at a summit on mental health and overmedicalization. "We will support patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision-making and shift the standard of care toward prevention, transparency and a more holistic approach to mental health."The plan includes evaluating prescription patterns, elevating nonmedication treatments and bridging research gaps.Children face a cascade of drugsAWall Street Journalinvestigation into ADHD prescribing revealed a national phenomenon racing ahead of science and ethics, experts say. Medicaid data show that children who start on ADHD medication are far more likely to be on additional psychiatric drugs within four years. Most had never received behavioral therapy, despite American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines recommending behavioral approaches first for young children.Psychologist Sam Goldstein, writing inPsychology Today, warned of this pattern for decades. "Pills do not teach skills," he wrote. "Medication cannot teach emotional regulation, self-control, frustration tolerance, or social competence."Goldstein noted that more than 30 years ago, he and a colleague examined prescribing patterns and warned that some children were placed on multiple medications without sufficient evidence of safety. Those concerns have now fully materialized.A nation's turn to pillsDanielle Gansky was 7 when a school suggested psychiatric evaluation for distraction and sloppy work. She ended up on 14 different psychiatric medications. "By her late 20s, she was fighting to taper off an antidepressant and still trying to understand the long-term consequences of medications she had been too young to question," according to theWall Street Journalreport.The pattern reflects broader trends. Between 2006 and 2016, prescription stimulant use in the U.S. more than doubled. From 2020 to 2021, stimulant prescriptions rose more than 10% among women ages 15 to 44 and men ages 25 to 44, according to the CDC.In many communities, behavioral therapy wait lists stretch months or years. Parents choose medication "not because it is the best answer but because it is the only available one," Goldstein wrote.Recovery beyond the pill bottleDelano's recovery involved more than stopping medications. She linked mental health to nutrition, sleep, sunlight and environmental factors. "The parts of your body that are altered by these medications" require support during withdrawal, she said.Now off psychiatric drugs for nearly 16 years, Delano said she no longer sees emotional pain as evidence of a broken brain. "The objective to living isn't happiness. It's not the absence of pain," she said. "It's connection. It's meaning. It's purpose."Her message hits at the heart of a debate that will only intensify. As millions of patients and families grapple with the consequences of a system built on quick fixes, the question is no longer whether psychiatric medications can help, but whether the cost of that help has grown too high to ignore.Sources for this article include:ChildrensHealthDefense.orgPMC.NCBI.NLM.NIH.govUSNews.comPsychologyToday.com
At 14, Laura Delano sat in a psychiatrist's office and heard words that would shape the next decade and a half of her life. After a single appointment, the doctor told her she had bipolar disorder and would need medication forever. What followed was a "prescription cascade" â two drugs became three, then four, then five, including Prozac, Depakote, lithium, Abilify and Effexor. Her condition only worsened."The more medications I took and the more diagnoses I accumulated, the more my life fell apart," Delano recently told "The Secretary Kennedy Podcast."Delano's story is a window into a system that now has 6.1 million American children under 17 taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to a December 2025 report. The same system, critics argue, too often substitutes pills for genuine care, leaving patients sicker and more dependent than when they started."No road map" for getting off the drugsDelano said she never questioned her treatment until 2010, when involuntary psychiatric interventions shattered her "unquestioning faith" in the system. Around the same time, she read Robert Whitaker'sAnatomy of an Epidemic, which questioned whether long-term psychiatric drug use may worsen outcomes.The realization was life-changing. "What if it's not treatment-resistant mental illness? What if it's the treatment?" she recalled thinking.But discontinuing the medications proved nearly impossible. "I had no road map. My doctors didn't support it. They had no idea how to do it," Delano said. She described patients using water mixtures and syringes to make tiny dose reductions, calling it "the wild, wild west out there."She later founded the Inner Compass Initiative to offer peer support for those questioning psychiatric medications.Federal intervention targets overprescribingThe issue has reached the highest levels of government. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a new action plan this month to curb psychiatric overprescribing, particularly among children."Today, we take clear and decisive action to confront our nation's mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications," Kennedy said at a summit on mental health and overmedicalization. "We will support patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision-making and shift the standard of care toward prevention, transparency and a more holistic approach to mental health."The plan includes evaluating prescription patterns, elevating nonmedication treatments and bridging research gaps.Children face a cascade of drugsAWall Street Journalinvestigation into ADHD prescribing revealed a national phenomenon racing ahead of science and ethics, experts say. Medicaid data show that children who start on ADHD medication are far more likely to be on additional psychiatric drugs within four years. Most had never received behavioral therapy, despite American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines recommending behavioral approaches first for young children.Psychologist Sam Goldstein, writing inPsychology Today, warned of this pattern for decades. "Pills do not teach skills," he wrote. "Medication cannot teach emotional regulation, self-control, frustration tolerance, or social competence."Goldstein noted that more than 30 years ago, he and a colleague examined prescribing patterns and warned that some children were placed on multiple medications without sufficient evidence of safety. Those concerns have now fully materialized.A nation's turn to pillsDanielle Gansky was 7 when a school suggested psychiatric evaluation for distraction and sloppy work. She ended up on 14 different psychiatric medications. "By her late 20s, she was fighting to taper off an antidepressant and still trying to understand the long-term consequences of medications she had been too young to question," according to theWall Street Journalreport.The pattern reflects broader trends. Between 2006 and 2016, prescription stimulant use in the U.S. more than doubled. From 2020 to 2021, stimulant prescriptions rose more than 10% among women ages 15 to 44 and men ages 25 to 44, according to the CDC.In many communities, behavioral therapy wait lists stretch months or years. Parents choose medication "not because it is the best answer but because it is the only available one," Goldstein wrote.Recovery beyond the pill bottleDelano's recovery involved more than stopping medications. She linked mental health to nutrition, sleep, sunlight and environmental factors. "The parts of your body that are altered by these medications" require support during withdrawal, she said.Now off psychiatric drugs for nearly 16 years, Delano said she no longer sees emotional pain as evidence of a broken brain. "The objective to living isn't happiness. It's not the absence of pain," she said. "It's connection. It's meaning. It's purpose."Her message hits at the heart of a debate that will only intensify. As millions of patients and families grapple with the consequences of a system built on quick fixes, the question is no longer whether psychiatric medications can help, but whether the cost of that help has grown too high to ignore.Sources for this article include:ChildrensHealthDefense.orgPMC.NCBI.NLM.NIH.govUSNews.comPsychologyToday.com
At 14, Laura Delano sat in a psychiatrist's office and heard words that would shape the next decade and a half of her life. After a single appointment, the doctor told her she had bipolar disorder and would need medication forever. What followed was a "prescription cascade" â two drugs became three, then four, then five, including Prozac, Depakote, lithium, Abilify and Effexor. Her condition only worsened."The more medications I took and the more diagnoses I accumulated, the more my life fell apart," Delano recently told "The Secretary Kennedy Podcast."Delano's story is a window into a system that now has 6.1 million American children under 17 taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to a December 2025 report. The same system, critics argue, too often substitutes pills for genuine care, leaving patients sicker and more dependent than when they started."No road map" for getting off the drugsDelano said she never questioned her treatment until 2010, when involuntary psychiatric interventions shattered her "unquestioning faith" in the system. Around the same time, she read Robert Whitaker'sAnatomy of an Epidemic, which questioned whether long-term psychiatric drug use may worsen outcomes.The realization was life-changing. "What if it's not treatment-resistant mental illness? What if it's the treatment?" she recalled thinking.But discontinuing the medications proved nearly impossible. "I had no road map. My doctors didn't support it. They had no idea how to do it," Delano said. She described patients using water mixtures and syringes to make tiny dose reductions, calling it "the wild, wild west out there."She later founded the Inner Compass Initiative to offer peer support for those questioning psychiatric medications.Federal intervention targets overprescribingThe issue has reached the highest levels of government. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a new action plan this month to curb psychiatric overprescribing, particularly among children."Today, we take clear and decisive action to confront our nation's mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications," Kennedy said at a summit on mental health and overmedicalization. "We will support patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision-making and shift the standard of care toward prevention, transparency and a more holistic approach to mental health."The plan includes evaluating prescription patterns, elevating nonmedication treatments and bridging research gaps.Children face a cascade of drugsAWall Street Journalinvestigation into ADHD prescribing revealed a national phenomenon racing ahead of science and ethics, experts say. Medicaid data show that children who start on ADHD medication are far more likely to be on additional psychiatric drugs within four years. Most had never received behavioral therapy, despite American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines recommending behavioral approaches first for young children.Psychologist Sam Goldstein, writing inPsychology Today, warned of this pattern for decades. "Pills do not teach skills," he wrote. "Medication cannot teach emotional regulation, self-control, frustration tolerance, or social competence."Goldstein noted that more than 30 years ago, he and a colleague examined prescribing patterns and warned that some children were placed on multiple medications without sufficient evidence of safety. Those concerns have now fully materialized.A nation's turn to pillsDanielle Gansky was 7 when a school suggested psychiatric evaluation for distraction and sloppy work. She ended up on 14 different psychiatric medications. "By her late 20s, she was fighting to taper off an antidepressant and still trying to understand the long-term consequences of medications she had been too young to question," according to theWall Street Journalreport.The pattern reflects broader trends. Between 2006 and 2016, prescription stimulant use in the U.S. more than doubled. From 2020 to 2021, stimulant prescriptions rose more than 10% among women ages 15 to 44 and men ages 25 to 44, according to the CDC.In many communities, behavioral therapy wait lists stretch months or years. Parents choose medication "not because it is the best answer but because it is the only available one," Goldstein wrote.Recovery beyond the pill bottleDelano's recovery involved more than stopping medications. She linked mental health to nutrition, sleep, sunlight and environmental factors. "The parts of your body that are altered by these medications" require support during withdrawal, she said.Now off psychiatric drugs for nearly 16 years, Delano said she no longer sees emotional pain as evidence of a broken brain. "The objective to living isn't happiness. It's not the absence of pain," she said. "It's connection. It's meaning. It's purpose."Her message hits at the heart of a debate that will only intensify. As millions of patients and families grapple with the consequences of a system built on quick fixes, the question is no longer whether psychiatric medications can help, but whether the cost of that help has grown too high to ignore.Sources for this article include:ChildrensHealthDefense.orgPMC.NCBI.NLM.NIH.govUSNews.comPsychologyToday.com
"The more medications I took and the more diagnoses I accumulated, the more my life fell apart," Delano recently told "The Secretary Kennedy Podcast."Delano's story is a window into a system that now has 6.1 million American children under 17 taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to a December 2025 report. The same system, critics argue, too often substitutes pills for genuine care, leaving patients sicker and more dependent than when they started."No road map" for getting off the drugsDelano said she never questioned her treatment until 2010, when involuntary psychiatric interventions shattered her "unquestioning faith" in the system. Around the same time, she read Robert Whitaker'sAnatomy of an Epidemic, which questioned whether long-term psychiatric drug use may worsen outcomes.The realization was life-changing. "What if it's not treatment-resistant mental illness? What if it's the treatment?" she recalled thinking.But discontinuing the medications proved nearly impossible. "I had no road map. My doctors didn't support it. They had no idea how to do it," Delano said. She described patients using water mixtures and syringes to make tiny dose reductions, calling it "the wild, wild west out there."She later founded the Inner Compass Initiative to offer peer support for those questioning psychiatric medications.Federal intervention targets overprescribingThe issue has reached the highest levels of government. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a new action plan this month to curb psychiatric overprescribing, particularly among children."Today, we take clear and decisive action to confront our nation's mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications," Kennedy said at a summit on mental health and overmedicalization. "We will support patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision-making and shift the standard of care toward prevention, transparency and a more holistic approach to mental health."The plan includes evaluating prescription patterns, elevating nonmedication treatments and bridging research gaps.Children face a cascade of drugsAWall Street Journalinvestigation into ADHD prescribing revealed a national phenomenon racing ahead of science and ethics, experts say. Medicaid data show that children who start on ADHD medication are far more likely to be on additional psychiatric drugs within four years. Most had never received behavioral therapy, despite American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines recommending behavioral approaches first for young children.Psychologist Sam Goldstein, writing inPsychology Today, warned of this pattern for decades. "Pills do not teach skills," he wrote. "Medication cannot teach emotional regulation, self-control, frustration tolerance, or social competence."Goldstein noted that more than 30 years ago, he and a colleague examined prescribing patterns and warned that some children were placed on multiple medications without sufficient evidence of safety. Those concerns have now fully materialized.A nation's turn to pillsDanielle Gansky was 7 when a school suggested psychiatric evaluation for distraction and sloppy work. She ended up on 14 different psychiatric medications. "By her late 20s, she was fighting to taper off an antidepressant and still trying to understand the long-term consequences of medications she had been too young to question," according to theWall Street Journalreport.The pattern reflects broader trends. Between 2006 and 2016, prescription stimulant use in the U.S. more than doubled. From 2020 to 2021, stimulant prescriptions rose more than 10% among women ages 15 to 44 and men ages 25 to 44, according to the CDC.In many communities, behavioral therapy wait lists stretch months or years. Parents choose medication "not because it is the best answer but because it is the only available one," Goldstein wrote.Recovery beyond the pill bottleDelano's recovery involved more than stopping medications. She linked mental health to nutrition, sleep, sunlight and environmental factors. "The parts of your body that are altered by these medications" require support during withdrawal, she said.Now off psychiatric drugs for nearly 16 years, Delano said she no longer sees emotional pain as evidence of a broken brain. "The objective to living isn't happiness. It's not the absence of pain," she said. "It's connection. It's meaning. It's purpose."Her message hits at the heart of a debate that will only intensify. As millions of patients and families grapple with the consequences of a system built on quick fixes, the question is no longer whether psychiatric medications can help, but whether the cost of that help has grown too high to ignore.Sources for this article include:ChildrensHealthDefense.orgPMC.NCBI.NLM.NIH.govUSNews.comPsychologyToday.com
"The more medications I took and the more diagnoses I accumulated, the more my life fell apart," Delano recently told "The Secretary Kennedy Podcast."Delano's story is a window into a system that now has 6.1 million American children under 17 taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to a December 2025 report. The same system, critics argue, too often substitutes pills for genuine care, leaving patients sicker and more dependent than when they started."No road map" for getting off the drugsDelano said she never questioned her treatment until 2010, when involuntary psychiatric interventions shattered her "unquestioning faith" in the system. Around the same time, she read Robert Whitaker'sAnatomy of an Epidemic, which questioned whether long-term psychiatric drug use may worsen outcomes.The realization was life-changing. "What if it's not treatment-resistant mental illness? What if it's the treatment?" she recalled thinking.But discontinuing the medications proved nearly impossible. "I had no road map. My doctors didn't support it. They had no idea how to do it," Delano said. She described patients using water mixtures and syringes to make tiny dose reductions, calling it "the wild, wild west out there."She later founded the Inner Compass Initiative to offer peer support for those questioning psychiatric medications.Federal intervention targets overprescribingThe issue has reached the highest levels of government. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a new action plan this month to curb psychiatric overprescribing, particularly among children."Today, we take clear and decisive action to confront our nation's mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications," Kennedy said at a summit on mental health and overmedicalization. "We will support patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision-making and shift the standard of care toward prevention, transparency and a more holistic approach to mental health."The plan includes evaluating prescription patterns, elevating nonmedication treatments and bridging research gaps.Children face a cascade of drugsAWall Street Journalinvestigation into ADHD prescribing revealed a national phenomenon racing ahead of science and ethics, experts say. Medicaid data show that children who start on ADHD medication are far more likely to be on additional psychiatric drugs within four years. Most had never received behavioral therapy, despite American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines recommending behavioral approaches first for young children.Psychologist Sam Goldstein, writing inPsychology Today, warned of this pattern for decades. "Pills do not teach skills," he wrote. "Medication cannot teach emotional regulation, self-control, frustration tolerance, or social competence."Goldstein noted that more than 30 years ago, he and a colleague examined prescribing patterns and warned that some children were placed on multiple medications without sufficient evidence of safety. Those concerns have now fully materialized.A nation's turn to pillsDanielle Gansky was 7 when a school suggested psychiatric evaluation for distraction and sloppy work. She ended up on 14 different psychiatric medications. "By her late 20s, she was fighting to taper off an antidepressant and still trying to understand the long-term consequences of medications she had been too young to question," according to theWall Street Journalreport.The pattern reflects broader trends. Between 2006 and 2016, prescription stimulant use in the U.S. more than doubled. From 2020 to 2021, stimulant prescriptions rose more than 10% among women ages 15 to 44 and men ages 25 to 44, according to the CDC.In many communities, behavioral therapy wait lists stretch months or years. Parents choose medication "not because it is the best answer but because it is the only available one," Goldstein wrote.Recovery beyond the pill bottleDelano's recovery involved more than stopping medications. She linked mental health to nutrition, sleep, sunlight and environmental factors. "The parts of your body that are altered by these medications" require support during withdrawal, she said.Now off psychiatric drugs for nearly 16 years, Delano said she no longer sees emotional pain as evidence of a broken brain. "The objective to living isn't happiness. It's not the absence of pain," she said. "It's connection. It's meaning. It's purpose."Her message hits at the heart of a debate that will only intensify. As millions of patients and families grapple with the consequences of a system built on quick fixes, the question is no longer whether psychiatric medications can help, but whether the cost of that help has grown too high to ignore.Sources for this article include:ChildrensHealthDefense.orgPMC.NCBI.NLM.NIH.govUSNews.comPsychologyToday.com
Source: NaturalNews.com
