Here’s a disturbing excerpt from an article in today’s NY Times that should be required reading for all parents and teachers who so blithely pretend that psychiatrists’ motivations for prescribing medication for children is the best interest of the children:

"Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts
By GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON, June 26 — As states begin to require that drug companies disclose their payments to doctors for lectures and other services, a pattern has emerged: psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty.
How this money may be influencing psychiatrists and other doctors has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. For instance, the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved."

As a psychotherapist for over 30 years, one who has worked with scores of school-age children, I can tell you that I still haven’t met a psychiatrist (and I’ve known dozens) whose first motivation in prescribing medication to a child is the child’s best interest. Money from pharmaceutical companies and pressure from parents and teachers who don’t want to take responsibility for a child’s emotional and mental problems comes way before the well-being of the child. I have had adults tell me in tears about their childhoods spent on medication, feeling "like a zombie" or otherwise "half-dead" or "not themselves" because of the effects of psychotropic drugs. And who cares? If you’re a psychiatrist and you can get rich writing that prescription, or you’re a parent or teacher and you can get your child to "sit still" on command by giving that daily drug dose, you don’t.
Sad, but true.
Peter Loffredo