Hi and welcome

welcome back to the savvy psychologist podcast. I'm your host Dr. Ellen Hendrickson and

I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

So we all know, or were, the kid who makes us wish for the invention of a Ritalin blow-. But real life, as always, is much more complicated.

Is it appropriate to put kids on psychiatric meds? And once they're on, how long is long enough?

Is it okay to take psychiatric medication for decades?

This week we'll tackle the topic of psychiatric meds that start early and last a lifetime.

So this week's topic comes by request on Facebook from listener Anita Meiko of Detroit. Anita works with foster kids and too often sees disadvantaged kids who've been on a

cocktail of psychiatric medications from as early as age six.

She asks, does such early use alter a child's brain or body, and have the effects of lifelong

psychiatric medication been studied?

So childhood mental illness and resulting medication is equally overblown and under-recognized.

Approximately 21% of American kids, that's one in five, will battle a diagnosable mental illness before they reach the age of 17,

whether or not they actually get treatment.

And the problem is anything but simple.

Some childhood illnesses, ADHD and autism, for example, often get misused as grab-bag diagnoses

when something's wrong when no one really knows what.

This leads to over-diagnosis and sometimes over-medicating. Other illnesses like substance abuse get overlooked

or written off as rebellion or experimentation leading to under-diagnosis and kids slipping through the cracks. But the most common problem

is inconsistent diagnosis. For example, a 2008 study found that fewer than half of individuals diagnosed with bipolar

disorder actually had the illness, while 5% of those diagnosed with

something completely different actually had bipolar disorder.

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