Kiddies on Drugs…
Stories about giving adult psycho-active substances to kiddies has taken a miraculous twist, with these substances now reportedly not merely diminishing annoying symptoms but quite literally coating the developing brain and protecting it from future ‘scarring’. Yes, that’s scarring with two ‘r’s. So, for example, depression scars the brain now, does it? A fact no doubt confirmed by methodical autopsy studies, cutting and slicing and dicing and pressing the scarred samples under glass. I seem to have heard all this before. I do recall attending a workshop at the Brain and Mind Research Institute in Sydney late in 2008, where one of the learned doctors was rambling on about zapping the dud bits of the brain with laser, to produce an assembly line of normal bliss. But I detract. Giving kiddies drugs meant for grown-ups (horses or people) compels a high level of ongoing inquiry. Whenever we read something like anti-depressants promote resilience in children or they stave off suicide, we cannot just smile and nod saying, ‘aint that great’. Maybe it is. There is a a far greater stack of evidence which says that these drugs cause kiddies harm in the short and potentially, the longer term. To my mind, any story that ends with a drugs saved someone from suicide vignette is always highly questionable.
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