This article originally appeared onThe Defenderand was republished with permission.
Guest post bySuzanne Burdick, Ph.D.
Roughly 10 million U.S. children and young adults ages 2-24 are on medication for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) — and 40% of those are on multiple psychotropic drugs, including antipsychotics, according toGretchen Watson, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and researcher.
“That is just absolutely unconscionable,” Watson said. “It makes no sense. The children aren’t the problem. We are.”
Watson is one of the U.S.’s foremost authorities on the overmedication of children with psychiatric drugs, according to her website.
On May 4, she spoke at the MAHA Institute’sMental Health and Overmedicalization Summitin Washington, D.C. She discussed the explosion of U.S. childhoodADHDdiagnoses in the late 1990s that snowballed into prescribing an ever-growing list of psychotropic drugs to young children.
“It’s now evident with the benefit of hindsight that ADHD is a gateway diagnosis that opened the door to the medicalization of childhood and to drug cocktails for young children,” she told the audience.
In a May 26 exclusive interview withThe Defender, Watson gave a sneak peek at material from her forthcoming book, “Prescription Affliction.” She calls the book “a road map for parents, educators, and clinicians who want to protect children and find better paths forward.”
In the 1990s and 2000s, Watson was studying the prevalence and impact of ADHD diagnoses and drug treatment patterns.
Initially, she worked as a psychologist in a pediatrics department in San Diego, where she saw very few children diagnosed with ADHD.
Source: The Vigilant Fox
