NY Times: Congratulations! Your piece is the 1 millionth story on overmedicated kids!!!
How many stories do we have to read about overmedicated kids? And why on earth, if the New York Times felt the need to do yet another one, would it feature the thing so prominently?
I’m referring to Duff Wilson‘s “Child’s Ordeal Shows Risk of Psychosis Drugs for Young” in today’s paper.
I’ll save you the trouble of reading this 2,000-word monster. Here’s what it says: Some doctors are too quick to give drugs to kids who don’t need them.
Is that front-page news? Some doctors are too quick to give drugs to 80-year-olds, too, or to middle-aged New York Times reporters who have sore joints because they just got divorced, are on the market again, and tried to run five miles after not exercising since their kids were born.
The story rehashes statistics about how the use of psychiatric drugs in kids is growing, and it rehashes studies about how poor kids are more likely to get crappy treatment. Stop the presses for that one!
Here’s the story you will almost never read, that should make the front page, but which nobody at the New York Times evidently believes: Thousands, or perhaps millions of kids with serious psychiatric illnesses get no treatment whatsoever. None.
Want a source on this? Ask any psychiatrist, any mental health worker, any parent of a kid who’s struggled to get help. Everybody knows this, but the papers only report, and re-report, and beat to death the story that some kids are overtreated.
Everybody wants to think that kids are “rambunctious,” not sick. (Wilson’s story uses that word.) Wouldn’t it be loverly…But face it, man, some kids are sick!
Psychiatric drugs are always described as “powerful” drugs. (Check again; Wilson uses that cliche.) Aspirin is a powerful drug; it can make you bleed to death, for chrissake. But nobody routinely writes “powerful aspirin tablets.”
Here’s the whole story: Some kids are overtreated. Some kids are undertreated. And some get nothing at all.
Why do the stories always focus on the kids who are overtreated?
After reading this story, I need a pill myself.
- Paul Raeburn
September 2nd, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Hmmm. While I agree that the central example of the 18-month old being prescribed Risperdal by a relatively clueless child psychiatrist really isn’t a worthy reason to re-visit the issue and is pretty emotionally loaded, there IS another issue in the story that relates to your complaint: poorer kids tend to be the ones who are being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs because it is a cheaper/easier option than doing therapy, family counseling, etc. This seems to me to be a side of the issue that is worth covering and it relates to the issue that children in this country are being underserved/mis-served in mental health. The relationship of the pharma industry to this issue is also interesting. I found the detail about the legos in the waiting room to be fascinating: “In the waiting room of Kyle’s original child psychiatrist, children played with Legos stamped with the word Risperdal, made by Johnson & Johnson. It has since lost its patent on the drug and stopped handing out the toys. Greg Panico, a company spokesman, said the Legos were not intended for children to play with — only as a promotional item.” Legos not intended for children to play with… really?
September 3rd, 2010 at 11:02 pm
James,
In my view, as I mentioned in the post, the Times’s reporting on poor kids getting worse care is also a rehash of other reporting. We’ve seen widely reported studies showing, for example, that poor kids are more likely to get drugs than to get psychotherapy. I’ll admit I hadn’t seen or read of the Risperdal “Legos,” but that’s not enough to hang a 2,000-word story on–and if it were, the blocks should have been in the lede.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
Paul