Five-Minute Time Out: The Medicated Child
Filmmaker Marcela Gaviria on bipolar toddlers.
by Gwynne Watkins
January 8, 2008
Obviously, it is often difficult to separate normal childhood anxieties from more serious signs of a disorder. Is this burden largely falling to parents? What can parents do to be better informed about the risks and benefits of medication?
Parents need to realize that the field of child psychiatry is in its infancy. That doesn't mean that it's not advancing nor that the medications don't work, but there is a long way before the field catches up with the rest of mainstream medicine. I think parents need to ask hard questions of the doctors they see. And as often as possible, they should try to see specialists in a given field.
You take a brief look at Brain Matters, a Dr. Phil-endorsed company that has offices in shopping centers and malls, where children are diagnosed with various disorders using brain scans. But brain scans aren't yet considered a reliable clinical tool. What accounts for the popularity of Brain Matters? Is it setting a dangerous precedent?
Diagnostic centers like Brain Matters exist because parents are desperate for answers. They'd like to find conclusive evidence that something is physically wrong with their child before they resort to medication. But the scans used by these centers just show blood flow patterns in the brain, and none of the experts we spoke to said these patterns were any real help in making a diagnosis in a single patient. The brain is the most complex organ in the body, and some of the top researchers cautioned that these scans are not reliable.
Hypothetically, after researching this special, would you be more or less likely to consider prescription drugs for your children?
I have to admit that I entered this project believing in the benefits of psychiatric medications and have come away knowing that they can be incredibly helpful, but I'm also wary of them. This film is a call to action. Families and children It seems as if ADHD paved the way for even more complicated diagnoses like bipolar. deserve more research. As a seven-year-old, I was diagnosed with bone cancer. That was back in 1975, where 90% of kids did not survive a cancer diagnosis. I was given many experimental drugs that ultimately saved my life. There was no research on many of these protocols back then, but ultimately pediatric oncologists set up a system whereby every child that received treatment was part of a clinical trial. In the thirty years since, the survival rate of pediatric cancer patients was turned around. This film advocates a similar model.
This documentary was a follow-up to one that you produced in 2001 about the same topic. What changes have you observed between then and now?
I am surprised by how the number of children on psychiatric medications continues to rise. It seems as if ADHD paved the way for even more complicated diagnoses like bipolar. In 2001, the issue of medicating kids with psychiatric drugs was boiling over. There were heated hearings nationwide and the scientologists were actively protesting and shouting. The debate exists today, but it's on the internet, in blogs and chat rooms across the country. I feel this debate really needs to be taken to a different level. Six million children are on psychiatric medications. They deserve to have the research that tells doctors which drugs work best, what combinations work least, what is the long term impact of being on these drugs, can you outgrow some of these mental illnesses, what are the long term outcomes of some of these disorders. Right now we don't have these answers. And that is a tragedy.
The Medicated Child airs Tuesday, January 8th, 2008, at 9 p.m. on PBS.
©2007 Gwynne Watkins and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Gwynne Watkins was Babble's founding Senior Editor. She has written for a variety of web and print publications, and her theatrical work has been produced throughout the New York area. Her new family musical, Tea with Chachaji, will premiere in early 2010. |
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