Worth the Risk for Your Child? Stimulants
About Kelly Brogan
KELLY BROGAN, MD, is a holistic psychiatrist, author of the New York Times Bestselling book, A Mind of Your Own, Own Your Self, the children’s book, A Time For Rain, and co-editor of the landmark textbook Integrative Therapies for Depression.
With 7% of boys and 5% of girls medicated with psychotropics, and 10,000 toddlers under 3 prescribed stimulants, it is time to ask ourselves, what are we doing to our children? Are we allowing profit-driven industry to lure us into a one pill cure for what is ailing our most vulnerable? The same medical-industrial complex that refuses to acknowledge the role of epigenetics, environmentally-induced toxicity, diet, and even pharmaceutical products themselves, in the equation that has yielded an epidemic of neurodevelopment disorders?
Remember that psychiatry, as a clinical profession, uses only subjective diagnostic measures, and has little to no appreciation for reversible causes of behavioral symptoms. I discuss my perspective on ADHD here, and plea for parents to educate themselves about the dangers of psychotropics, and the role of nutrition in optimal child health.
We need to look no further than Study 329, a ghostwritten, data-manipulated propaganda tool designed to promote the prescription of SSRIs to children. Ultimately resulting in a 3 billion dollar fine to Glaxo Smith Klein (part of the largest health care fraud settlement in US history), 11 years after the study’s publication, Study 329 suppressed clear and present evidence of increased suicidality in treated children, in addition to falsely representing Paxil as outperforming placebo. This lack of efficacy was reflected in the results of two other unpublished GSK studies – 377 and 701.
In a further emergence of too little too late, post hoc data collection, a 9 year, longitudinal, prospective cohort study, conducted in Denmark has demonstrated that cardiovascular events were twice as likely in stimulant-prescribed children, than non.
They state:
Our results suggest a safety signal with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease associated with stimulant treatment in children and adolescents, even after adjusting for a number of potential confounders.
In any reasonable, ethical clinical paradigm, this paper would sound the alarm for immediate implementation of the precautionary principal, ceasing prescriptions for stimulants to children, immediately.
Parents are unlikely to hear about this data from their prescribers, but are in a position to inform themselves about holistic perspectives, and band together in communities demanding the right to protect their children from reckless obstetrics, mandated medical interventions such as vaccination, a chemical soup of environmental pollutants, addictive and neurotoxic processed foods, and unsupportive learning environments. Check out a community of families who are standing up, together – Fearless Parent – for support, resources, and dialogue about ways to take back our health, and that of our children.
