by Kieron McFadden
As children's use of psychiatric drugs begins to decelerate and psychiatry wanes, nutrition proves better than drugs.
The growth of the dreadful practice of giving dangerous psychiatric drugs to children in the U.S. is slowing as state agencies increase their vigilance over usage and medical doctors and perhaps even the more benign psychiatrists grow more wary of such powerful medications.
This softening in sales for children is the first sign that litigation, reaction to improper marketing tactics on the part of manufacturers who actually spend more on marketing than they do on research, and concern about the dreadful side effects of these drugs is affecting what had been a fast-growing children's drug segment.
The ongoing psychiatric horror story in Florida, in which one little boy committed suicide and another died while on psychiatric medication, may also be playing a role in this appearance at last of a little light at the end of a very long dark, corpse-strewn tunnel.
How anyone can tout medications for kids that are known to be dangerous and harmful even for adults, just to make a buck, is beyond this writer but evidently some people do. Thankfully some of the heroic work put in by human rights and consumer groups to warn people they are being sold a tainted bill of goods is beginning to pay off. It may be too late to save many thousands of children currently on psychiatric medication but many thousands more in the future will have cause to be thankful for it.
Another factor now entering the scene is a growing awareness on the part of the public that what is being pitched as "medicine" for their kids is not only immensely harmful, it is more often than not, not necessary. It comes as part of a vast money spinning machine motivated by profit and rapacious in its quest for sales and God help anyone who lets conscience, the welfare of children, or the concept of actually healing people get in the way. I guess the old adage is true: you can't fool all of the people all of the time - even when you drug many of them first.
As with adults, any of the bogus "disorders" from which, according to the unproven opinion of some psychiatrist, a child is suffering is NOT some vague congenital disorder or "chemical imbalance" or any other catch-phrase of the brain but is the symptom of some undetected, undiagnosed, untreated physical ailment.
The ailment could be an undetected broken bone, a glandular disorder, an allergy, a food intolerance or plain and simple bad diet leading to vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
The truth of the matter is that advances in understanding of nutrition and diet and the use of food as medicine have left the whole field of psychiatric medication back in the Stone Age. We no longer need psychiatry to invent bogus mental illnesses, a practice spotlighted recently by the scandal over that archetypal bogus mental illness and excuse to drug the kids, ADHD. We no longer need a psychiatrist to then clobber the living organism with factory-spawned chemical poisons and then listen to him tell us, "The illness was worse than we thought. He needs more medication..." as we watch our child deteriorate instead of get well before our eyes.
Psychiatry has had its day. So has the pharmacopia, as witnessed by the billions it must spend in marketing and influencing governments just to keep its psychotropic sales happening. It was not a very bright or successful day and no-one mourns its passing.
Let us move on and provide for our kids the benefits of modern knowledge about the mind, the living organism and what it needs for optimum function.
If you are having a problem with your child, here's what to do:
1. Get him a thorough medical examination and persist with this until his physical illness or illnesses are identified.
2. If an outright illness (such as a broken bone, mild poisoning or whatever it is) is found, get the illness treated. Follow the medical doctor's advice. Use a doctor who has expertise in the field of diet and nutrition if you can. Avoid the use of drugs if you can but this will depend on how life-threatening the illness is or how much pain is involved. For instance if a tooth abscess is discovered and a tooth must be extracted, no-one is suggesting the child should not be given dental anesthetic,
3. Get him to a nutritionist and have his allergies, dietary deficiencies and so forth identified. Follow the nutritionist's advice to the letter as regards supplements, vitamins, dietary changes and do forth.
4. Watch your child get more and more well. Once the underlying physical illnesses are handled, you will see your child experience a resurgence.
5. Never, never, never let anyone tell you your child has a mental illness. Never, never, never let your child be given any psychiatric, mind altering medication. There are plenty of dietary, vitamin and herbal remedies for whatever trouble the psychiatric drug purports to handle but without the ghastly side effects.
6 Go to http://www. cchr.org for in depth data about psychiatry and the dangers of psychiatric drugs.
