Ep 4: Are We Overmedicating Kids?

Raising Parents with Emily Oster

The Free Press

Parenting, Kids & Family

4.5 • 660 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2024

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kids and teens today are more diagnosed than ever, across the board, whether it’s a disorder like ADHD or a mental health condition like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Say you’re 15 and you’re worried about that upcoming algebra test? Anxiety. You’re 12 and you weren’t invited to that birthday party? Depression. Scared to ride your bike again after that little fall last summer? PTSD. And with these diagnoses come a menu of medications that purport to fix your child. Today: What’s behind the rise in diagnoses—both for ADHD, mostly among young boys, and for anxiety and depression, mostly among teen girls? Are they really the most distracted, anxious, and depressed generation ever to exist? Or are we, perhaps, pathologizing what used to be considered normal feelings and behaviors—and as a result, diagnosing and overmedicating kids for. . . acting like kids? And what are the long-term effects of having millions of boys on speed and millions of girls on SSRIs? Resources from this episode: Abigail Shrier Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up (Bookshop) Jennifer Wallace Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It (Bookshop) Sami Timimi Naughty Boys: Anti-Social Behaviour, ADHD and the Role of Culture (Bookshop) Erica Komisar Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters (Bookshop) If you liked what you heard in this episode, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone. Emily here, and you're listening to Raising Parents, my new podcast in partnership with
0:06.0	the free press, where we interrogate all of the big and pressing and confusing questions facing
0:11.6	parents today. Before we get to the show, I'm so excited to tell you that this season is in partnership
0:17.3	with Airbnb. If you know anything about me, you know how much I love Airbnb.
0:22.4	I think I'm currently holding like six Airbnb reservations in my account.
0:27.4	Airbnb has provided incredible experiences for me, my family, and our friends across the
0:33.0	country and the world time and time again.
0:36.3	More on that and how you too can use Airbnb on your next family trip later in the episode.
0:42.0	For now, on to the show.
0:47.8	Let's play a game.
0:49.5	Listen to a few experts describe symptoms of a medical condition and see how many describe you or someone
0:57.2	you know.
0:58.7	Explosive or emotional outbursts.
1:01.2	They tend to struggle with tolerating frustration or being sensitive to rejection or criticism.
1:08.2	It's really hard for them to concentrate on one show, one activity, but on the flip side,
1:12.1	they could also kind of hyper focus or kind of obsess about something as well.
1:15.6	If you're late, you know, sometimes maybe only by 10 minutes, but it's a chronic pattern.
1:22.6	Always moving, pacing, fidgeting, can't sit still.
1:26.6	You feel like you need to yell just to get through
1:29.3	to them or remind them about 50 times in order to get them to do something. If your book bag,
1:36.3	your desk, your closet, your drawers, it looks like a bomb went off, that's a sign. They might cut
1:43.8	line, grab toys, they don't want to take turns.
	...

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