by John Breeding, Ph.D.

Alice, the mother of a seven-year-old son, Nathan, recently visited my office for a counseling session. Nathan had reportedly been different and difficult from the beginning: exhibiting early seizure-like activity, a most challenging temperament, great sensitivity to various types of stimulation, intense frustration, aggressive tantrums, and other apparent developmental difficulties. Alice had taken him to doctors from a young age, obtaining a variety of mostly nonspecific diagnoses of developmental problems. Alice felt unappreciated as a parent, hurt and angry that the Montessori school her son had attended at ages four and five had ultimately rejected him. She felt judged by other parents, whom she felt blamed her for her son’s challenging behavior. And she felt unsupported by both camps of opinion regarding "medication": the pro-Ritalin forces challenged her reluctance to use the drug for her son, and the antidrug group vehemently urged her to resist drug use.

Alice’s personal stance on the Ritalin issue was clear. While she basically agreed that these "medications" are not good for children, she also felt that, in her family’s case, it had been helpful. Nathan had been diagnosed at age five with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and had taken Ritalin for a year. Alice thought the drug greatly helped her son, slowing him down enough so that he could listen and process information. She and her boyfriend both felt drugs made the boy much easier to be with; further, their own reduced stress eased them so much that they were now able to consider other alternatives for Nathan, such as nutritional supplementation.

Proponents of psychiatric drugs attest that they "work," meaning they alter mood, thought, and action. They also "work," of course, in that they assuage the medical community’s expectation that drugs be used to "treat" these children. I believe that fully informed adults should have every right to voluntarily use any drugs they wish, as long as they don’t endanger others in doing so. Children, however, are not able to give fully informed consent to drug use – especially those under six years of age, a group in whom we are witnessing a dramatic increase in psychiatric drug prescription.1 It is, therefore, our responsibility as adults to ensure every possible opportunity for optimal development for our children, to protect and defend our children from powerful toxic drugs, particularly those prescribed for psychiatric purposes.

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