Hospitals See Alarming Increase in Suicidal Children
No easy solutions for pediatric mental health.
Here’s a troubling thought: more kids and young adults are intentionally hurting themselves — sometimes lethally.
“The biggest news here is that there is a startling jump in the number of kids hospitalized for suicide and self injury between 2006 and 2011,” said Celeste Torio, PhD, MPH, scientific review officer, Office of Extramural Research Education and Priority Populations (OEREP) at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
The data on self-injury and suicide come from a report, published in American Pediatrics that found inpatient visits for suicide, suicidal ideation, and self-injury rose by 104% from 29,000 in 2006 to just below 59,000 in 2011, while “all-cause” children’s hospitalizations have not increased.
Filed under: General Problems
One cause of the medication use is that many are using them as a way to control pain in both children and adults. Instead of testing and narcotics it’s considered socially acceptable medication despite the side effects and death.
Yes SW, pain, depression, Bolivian Birdwatchers Disease, and every other new ‘disease’ or disorder those head shrinking hacks come up with in each new DSM release. AND pharma is happy to remind you in the straight to consumer advertising that they are all non-narcotic. This is usually after the soothing voice of the narrator rattles off the dozens of disturbing side effects attributed to these over-hyped medications. During these precautionary warnings you are treated to viewing beautiful people frolicking about with their children and pets in the warm sunshine. Sickening really.
In some cases they ARE useful. Some older TCAs like amitriptyline (Elavil),, which I use daily, are effective in battling neuropathies. To some extent at least. I still need added gabapentin for radicular pain from recent collapsed vertebra and unrelated existing peripheral neuropathy).
At any rate, they have all skyrocketed in price too over the last several years.
Despite shopping around (w/in reason; I do NOT support WAGS or CVS) and having Part D coverage for my disabilities, the best price I can find in my area is $35 for #30 generic by Sandoz !!! Looking back through my records, this is well over twice the cost of the same dose 3 yrs ago !! My guess is they’d go for just a few loonies for our northern neighbors.
Adults want quick fixes, and obviously if they can get them why not their children?
Inappropriate medicating of children and its high frequency is a point that is only mentioned briefly in the article.
* “Some doctors say there is too much emphasis on medicating children instead of working with them and their caregivers to understand what is triggering their behavior. Dr. Glenn Saxe, chairman of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU-Langone Medical Center and a proponent of trauma-focused therapy, says psychiatry has missed “big opportunities to help children. This problem has led to kids being medicated more and more.”
Another factor not taken into account is the high use of these meds on children covered by Medicaid. It’s always easier to utilize a quick fix to a problem if it’s paid for by taxpayers (other than the parents) than investing the time and effort involved in family counseling and therapy. [How many]?
* “………analysis of 2010 data on five leading antipsychotics suggests that more than 70% of the cost of these drugs was paid for by Medicaid and other government programs.”
* “Data from the inspector general’s five-state probe indicate that 482 children 3 and under were prescribed antipsychotics during the period in question, including 107 children 2 and under. Six were under a year old,”
Now I’ve heard of the terrible twos but for powerful anti-psychotics being prescribed to 1 and 2 yr old children?
*the above quotations from link below titled:
U.S. Probes Use of Antipsychotic Drugs on Children [Wall Street Journal]
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323477604578654130865747470
It is already common knowledge that children face increased risk of suicide while taking anti-depressants. It is already (or should be) common knowledge that most anti-depressants are not much more effective than placebo in treating depression. But imagine this, a misdiagnosed child, taking an amphetamine on a daily basis for years. And they wonder why suicide rates and hospitalizations are up among children?
Stimulants such as methylphenidate (Ritalin) and mixed amphetamine salts (Adderall) generally have been safe and effective in treating ADHD symptoms in school-age children and some adults. But the use of stimulants by PRESCHOOLERS has generated more controversy because of a greater risk of side effects and concerns about the drugs’ impact on growth and brain development. (For more details, see the July 2011 Monitor.) http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/prescribing.aspx
Yeah that’s right PRESCHOOLERS!! i’m thinking the psychiatrists (Kolodny et all) need to get their own house in order before lecturing about inappropriate and over-prescribing of pain medications, especially for those with documented diseases/injuries (many incurable or unfixable) known to cause pain.
The use of psychotropic drugs by adult Americans increased 22 percent from 2001 to 2010, with one in five adults now taking at least one psychotropic medication, according to industry data. In 2010, Americans spent more than $16 billion on antipsychotics, $11 billion on antidepressants and $7 billion for drugs to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
One in 5 adults need psych meds, really? I wonder, with all the patients w/ untreated or under treated pain, what percent of these are treated for ‘psychiatric’ conditions like depression and anxiety.(not even counting misdiagnosed substance abusers) Untreated/under treated pain can be awful depressing.
“An analysis of all FDA clinical trials for four SSRI antidepressants found that the drugs didn’t perform significantly better than placebos in treating mild or moderate depression, and the benefits of the drugs were “relatively small even for severely depressed patients” (PLoS Medicine, 2008)
“….according to a study led by researchers at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center (New England Journal of Medicine, 2008). The study examined 74 FDA-registered studies for a dozen antidepressants and found that most studies with negative results were not published in scientific literature or were published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome. The FDA studies showed that half of the drug trials had positive results, but 94 percent of the trials cited in published literature were positive..”
above from link below, an article from the
American Psychological Association titled Inappropriate Prescribing
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/prescribing.aspx
After cholesterol drugs, as a group, antipsychotics rank #2 for rx sales.. Call ME CRAZY but it is staggering to consider that this many Americans, including children, need antipsychotic medications!
One wonders how much has been ingrained in the past couple of generations of ‘everyone wins and no losers’ and we cant be negative or else we hurt the kids self esteem (ie like helicoptor parents) and now these kids/teens/young people are realizing the real world isn’t at all unicorns and 100% warm fuzzies and they don’t know how else to deal with it. They find out they arent the PERFECT students or children their parents told them they are, kept telling them they are expected to be or they are nothing. (Youth/school Sports is another good example) The schools are expected now to be parents, but they don’t have the funding to deal with kids who have developed mental issues from the constant pressures placed on them from home. It’s society that needs to change and NOW. The suicide rate in Japan is high because expectations put on kids is so unbearable, kids have committed suicide because a placement test score result was not high enough for them to get into the ‘correct college or college at all’
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