A recent study has found that children are now receiving treatment for mental illness on a larger scale than adults. It's great that more attention is being paid to mental illness but also very scary because what if these kids are being unnecessarily treated with medication or misdiagnosed due to changing diagnostic criteria?
In the past, there have been mental illnesses that psychiatrists wouldn't diagnose in children until they were 18 because they were known for not presenting until adulthood. Children grow in and out of things all the time, hormones fluctuate, and misdiagnosing and treating illnesses with the wrong medications can cause other issues. There is a real concern that lenient diagnosing pathologizes normal kid behavior. In other words, turning to pills and medicine for everything affecting our kids may not be the answer!
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Are there really more cases of children with mental illnesses being treated or have psychiatrists changed the criteria for diagnosing the disease so much that more kids are falling on the spectrum? My concern is that now 15 in 100 adolescents who visit the doctor for a potential mental health disorder leave with a diagnosis and medication. Mental illness has become much more accepted in children and pediatricians are more willing to diagnose ADD/ADHD, anxiety and depression in children and in the process, prescribe medication for treatment.
Honestly, I think only psychiatrists should be able to prescribe medications for mental illness. When I was planning my wedding, I was experiencing what I thought was anxiety from all the stress of planning. My doctor prescribed antidepressants to help. In fact, by the wedding day she had me on a very high dose of medication. Later, I found that, with my correct diagnosis, antidepressants were the last thing I should have been taking and, in fact, they were only making my condition worse. General practitioners and pediatricians do not specialize in mental illness and giving them the power to diagnose and treat is scary.
Look, I am the first one in line to advocate for mental illness and mental illness treatment for adults and children. I want every one out of their mental illness closet and letting their freak flag fly while chanting, "We are not broken!" I want everyone who needs help to get help without stigma or shame. I want us to treat mental illness like every other illness and not a defect. But what I don't want is mental illness to be treated like a virus in which doctors over medicate just to shut the patient up and get them out of their offices.
Psychotherapy has to be a first course of action. We can't just throw medication at our children unnecessarily to bandage the problem. I think there is too many drugs being prescribed to children these days just to make them less combative, but maybe all they really need is some time, attention, understanding and compassion. High-spirited, cranky, emotional or throwing a tantrum does not a diagnosis make. Just because somebody's having a bad day doesn't mean they are crazy.
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