1 Year Old Given Antidepressants and the Flaws in the Treatment of Depression
Antidepressant drugs have been administered to children as young as 1 at a UK National Health Service run hospital.
At this hospital in Dundee, Scotland, from January to May 2016, antidepressants have been prescribed to well over 450 under 18’s including a 7-year-old girl, as recently reported by the local Evening Telegraph. While 14-17 year-olds were the most treated under 18’s for antidepressants, more girls received treatment than boys. The 1 year old, a boy, had been drugged for depression in 2014.
A spokeswoman for this hospital said that besides clinical depression antidepressants are used to treat a number of other conditions including anxiety disorders and chronic pain. She also stressed that antidepressant drugging was not the only treatment. Cognitive, behavioral, talk and counseling therapies were also used in combination where appropriate …
Public outcry
In spite of the spokeswoman’s justification, the recent revealing that a 1-year-old boy had been drugged for depression, as well as the other children, at this hospital has sparked much public outcry over the use of antidepressants.
Not just for children, but as a treatment for adults at any hospital or from any GP, here are the general objections to prescribed antidepressants.
Widget not in any sidebars
Antidepressants:
1. …have potential nasty side effects
The side-effects of antidepressants have been well documented. Side-effects include suicidal tendencies (yes, the drug can have the effect of causing the very thing it is supposed to stop), violent outbursts, impulsivity, drug overdependence, addictiveness… which could lead to serious illness or even death.
2. Are given to patients lacking the ability to make educated choices on health
It must be compassionately understood that the use of mind-altering drugs on patients, as in the prescribing of antidepressants, involves making some difficult choices. However, many patients or parents acting for their children may not be informed or educated enough to make appropriate decisions when allowing these mind-altering drugs to be used.
Besides an awareness of the potential side-effects of antidepressants and questionable claims over the drugs’ effectiveness (see later), to have complete and accurate information for making informed choices, there’s another important consideration, which is the need to understand that the prescribing of antidepressants:
3. … involves vested interest
It is crucial to learn to discern when vested interest rears its ugly head. There are many circumstances in the medical/pharmaceutical establishment where profits are put above the genuine welfare concern of patients. The prescribing of antidepressants is no exception.
Unscrupulous drug dealers don’t have to be strangers lurking on street corners. They may exist in the form of MDs willing to prescribe mega-buck making antidepressants with lethal potential side-effects over cheap or no cost at all natural-based alternatives when fighting depression.
You may have a case where someone is suffering from depression because of a long-term bad diet, not getting outdoors enough for exercise and sunlight, spending too much time using computer Wi-Fi or spending lengthy periods in isolation and loneliness. Unfortunately, these things go by unheeded because there’s no money to be made here for the medical/pharmaceutical establishment.
Similarly, cheap and natural alternative therapies go by with scant attention paid to their effectiveness. Will this piece covering recent research findings that the hallucinogen psilocybin in mushrooms is highly effective for treating severe depression go basically unnoticed in mainstream media and medicine?
4. Don’t get to the root-cause
Drugs can only treat the symptoms. They could give temporary relief, but the underlying root causes such as those related to the above natural-based circumstances need to be thoroughly addressed for the depression to stop returning.
Flaws in the antidepressant treatment of depression
According to Dr. Kelly Brogan, MD, the claim that depression is caused by a brain chemical imbalance such as a serotonin deficiency is greatly flawed. It may come as a further shock to some that no studies can confirm the chemical imbalance hypothesis or serotonin deficiency.
Various brain scanning and imaging techniques on patients, suicide post-mortems and animal physiological studies have not shown any convincing evidence. Doesn’t this make the drug-based serotonin re-uptake model for treatment worthless? Where is the objective evidence confirming the drug’s efficacy?
It’s worth remembering this when those cleverly worded, misleading sales-pitched, slick antidepressant drug advertising campaigns “educate” you about “chemical imbalances” and “serotonin deficiency…”
“But the antidepressants work for me!” A patient might say.
Okay, sometimes they do, but according to Dr. Irving Kirsch they work because of the placebo effect. The faith and the belief in the pill’s efficacy is enough for the patient to produce the physiological changes needed to manifest relief.
To reiterate here’s an excellent short video from Dr. Kelly Brogan, MD.
More and more people are becoming aware that antidepressants are part of a number of mind-altering psychoactive drugs as in the case of ADHD that have greatly increased in prescription rate over recent years. They have voiced much criticism, questioning their need or effectiveness. Then there are those who have had to pick up the pieces from the consequences of the awful side-effects of these drugs…
Parents for their children, or adults alike, making choices through education and discernment over these potentially dangerous and addictive drugs is indeed needed at all times.
You can read more from Paul A. Philips at his site NewPardigm.ws
