Why Are America’s Poorest Toddlers Being Overprescribed ADHD Drugs?

Greetings,

(Note: America must fulfill her destiny. It is written in the history of Herod & Pharaoh. They were after the destruction of God’s beloved. They went after the destruction, mentally as well as culturally, the youth in order to suppress their thoughts of independence and moving towards self.

The same thing is being repeated today with all of this prescribing of drugs for everything from a lisp to a burp. They are trying to sedate you and destroy or control that grey matter. The women and the youth are the prime target.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t let them get your children these untested drugs. The corporations make money. The government gets a mind control slave. And the drugs have more deadly side-effects than the symptoms you may take it for!)

Why Are America’s Poorest Toddlers Being Overprescribed ADHD Drugs?

Against all medical guidelines, children who are two and three years old are getting diagnosed with ADHD and treated with Adderall and other stimulants. It may be shocking, but it’s perfectly legal.

Thousands of the nation’s poorest children under the age of four are being prescribed stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall for ailments they’re too young to even have. A first-ever CDC study estimates that under the Medicaid healthcare program, doctors have given some 10,000 American toddlers a diagnosis of ADHD and treated them with ADHD drugs that have not been shown to be effective or safe in children that young. The news that amphetamine-based drugs like Adderall and the methylphenidate Ritalin are being used to medicate, at a minimum, one out of every 225 toddlers nationwide outraged some medical professionals when it was first announced in May at the Georgia Mental Health Forum.

“It’s absolutely shocking, and it shouldn’t be happening,” Anita Zervigon-Hakes, a children’s consultant to the Carter Center, which sponsored the forum, told the New York Times. “[Doctors] are just feeling around in the dark. We obviously don’t have our act together for little children.”

Prescribing ADHD drugs to toddlers against the recommendations of experts may be a new practice, but it is part of a much larger trend of prescribing psychoactive drugs to children who are in foster care, juvenile detention or just living in poverty. (The practice also extends to elderly people in nursing homes.) Impulsive, aggressive behavior is common in such settings, and may be a symptom of ADHD or other medical conditions requiring medication.

“I’ve put several three-year-olds on it [as a last resort] and, with the medication, it’s like night and day,” said Max Wiznitzer, MD, a pediatric neurologist at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospitals. ”These are very challenging children. We’ve made sure they do have ADHD features, that their behavior is occurring in multiple settings, that it’s not due to poor parenting, it’s not due to poor teaching, it’s not some other medical condition.”

Yet critics ask if the practice is doing more harm than good. They say that the high rates of use of these drugs amount to gross overprescribing.

Susanna Visser, who heads ADHD research at the CDC and who presented the report, said, “Families of toddlers with behavioral problems are coming to the doctor’s office for help, and the help they’re getting too often is a prescription for a Class II controlled substance, which has not been established as safe for that young of a child. It puts these children and their developing minds at risk, and their health is at risk.”

Visser was also involved in drafting the American Academy of Pediatrics’ most recent guidelines for treating children with ADHD. After concluding that no child under the age of four could be properly diagnosed with ADHD, the group advised against doctors prescribing stimulants for kids aged two or three. Of all the ADHD drugs on the market, only Adderall is FDA approved for children under age six.

In a recent phone conversation, Visser was quick to defend the legitimacy of prescribing stimulants to treat ADHD (within the recommended guidelines), but she also expressed concern that too many doctors may be taking this route instead of pursuing behavioral therapy, which has been shown to be an effective alternative to medication….MORE HERE

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