A boom in the diagnosis of OCD in children has given the psychiatric industry a new playing field. What are the current methods used by psychiatrists to enforce their fascination with drugging children as a means to “cure” mental disease? And how do antibiotics relate to the treatment of OCD in children?

 This profession has been criticized for drugging children as young as 4 (sometimes even younger) with powerful antipsychotic drugs. All that bad publicity may have been the impetus behind their search for a more wholesome sounding chemical solution.  The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has given $1.1 million dollars to University of South Florida researchers to study the treatment of OCD in children. Specifically, they are testing a powerful antibiotic D-cycloserine (DCS) on young kids. What is the actual purpose of this drug? To treat Tuberculosis.
According to researchers, there are only beneficial effects from DCS. It is hard, however, to feel reassured by a psychiatrist’s pronouncements. After all, many of them had no qualms about giving Prozac to children. And sure enough, the side effects of their latest prize drug are questionable, to say the least.
Some of the more severe reactions of this Tuberculosis antibiotic include difficulty breathing, mouth swelling, and interestingly enough, aggression and bizarre behavior.  It seems the psychiatric industry is continuing their fascination with mood altering chemicals, no matter the source or original intent of the drug.
Additional mental symptoms associated with DCS are depression, dizziness, headache, memory loss, confusion and excessive irritability. Some may experience numbness or skin tingling, even paralysis and seizures. And not surprisingly, suicidal thoughts.
It is said that the amount given to treat those diagnosed with OCD is 1/10 of the dose given to those with Tuberculosis. Somehow, this is not reassuring. The drug is a powerful one, and children are still developing and growing. One wonders if any study has been done on long-term effects. One suspects not, if the typical pattern of drug testing on children holds true.
The NIMH, in promoting this study, apparently has decided that experimenting on young children is not ethically or morally wrong. They have a code regarding the capacity to give consent. (The NIMH goes into some detail re: an adult who is mentally incapacitated. Interestingly, however, they justify testing their chemicals on mentally impaired people as a problem in delaying their “scientific questions that could lead to new treatments…”) In other words, the end justifies the means.
Obtaining the consent of a parent to allow their child to be a guinea pig does not seem fair to that child. Will there be future accusations of child abuse? And would those accusations be justified? These are questions that deserve answers. And since the NIMH is a government agency, questions of freedom and individual rights should be scrutinized. One wonders how a government agency, in the first place, is involved in giving grants to universities to experiment with OCD in children.
Children can be helped to overcome troubling behavior by nutritional means. Tests have shown that foods containing higher levels of the B vitamin Inositol may help. Some foods high in this nutrient include organic liver, blackstrap molasses, eggs, whole grains, raisins, nuts citrus fruits and dried beans and others.