Psychiatrist Peter Breggin asserts the psychiatric drugging of children is nothing but child abuse. He remarks that in the past, abuse of vulnerable members of society was largely justified based on “moral, religious, patriotic or ethnic grounds.” But today’s child abuse by psychiatrists is rationalized on “scientific and medical grounds.”
This abuse is almost completely unacknowledged, according to Dr. Breggin. Yet most of us are grimly aware of an abundance of children diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Bipolar and so on.
And what is the “treatment” for children so labeled? Antidepressants, psychostimulants, tranquilizers, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics. A large number of kids are given a cocktail of these drugs.
In Florida, foster kids are especially vulnerable. In 2011 a two year investigation concluded that kids in Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Texas were “prescribed psychotropic drugs at rates 2.7 to 4.5 times higher than other children in Medicaid in 2008.”
Foster kids, of course, are the most vulnerable of all children. Who is standing up for their rights? Possibly parentless and already traumatized, they are subject to the worst abuse of all: psychiatric drugs that destroy what is left of their childhood.
Dr. Breggin makes another compelling point “… convincing children that they have ‘something wrong’ in their heads such as genetically crossed wires or biochemical imbalances is the surest way to rob them of self-esteem, personal responsibility, self-mastery and the hope of an unlimited future. Second, convincing children that they have a psychiatric diagnosis or treating them as if they have one and teaching them to rely on psychiatric drugs is a prescription for their becoming lifelong mental patients.”
Bravo, Dr. Breggin! If only more psychiatrists cared about the lives of the children placed under their care. The only abuse in history approaching the devastation caused by today’s psychiatry would be Hitler’s Germany, where vulnerable people were killed outright, used in medical experiments, tortured or starved to death.
According to Dr. Breggin, and easily backed up by innumerable case histories, all psychiatric drugs have the potential to cause horrendous and deadly side effects. Just a few he mentions are:

• Chronic depression and stunting of growth (from stimulants)
• Severe obesity, permanent and disfiguring neurological disorders, diabetes and shortened lifespan (from antipsychotic drugs)

Of course, there are many other “side effects.” The case of Gabriel Myers comes to mind. This seven year old boy hung himself in Florida a few years back, while on a cocktail of psychiatric drugs. And yes, some of them were well known to cause suicidal thoughts in children.
That tragedy made headlines. But there are everyday tragedies throughout our state; the lives of many of our youngest, brightest, most artistic children are being irrevocably damaged by psychiatric drugs.
These children are our future, too. And they have a right to their own lives. Many have said that some of the most brilliant thinkers and artists of the past would have been diagnosed as ADHD or ADD had those labels been invented. What if Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso or Mark Twain had had their creativity snuffed out by psychiatric drugs?
When a psychiatrist with the credentials of Peter Breggin stands up against his peers, it is time to listen. And when our voices join his in protest against psychiatric abuse, the children of our state and nation will have a future to look forward to.
 
SOURCES:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/the-new-child-abuse-psych_b_788900.html
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/12/01/143017520/foster-kids-even-infants-more-likely-to-be-given-psychotropic-drugs
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/after-7-year-old-gabriel-myers-suicide-fla-bill-looks-to-tighten-access-to-psychiatric-drugs/