No Child Left Different (Childhood in America)

By Sharna Olfman

Book Overview

A stellar group of authors from across disciplines explains the alarming increase in the use of psychotropic medications, questions the causes, and presents disturbing thoughts regarding this phenomenon and the risks it creates for children. They take an in-depth look at the conditions that have led to drugging our children, and stress how emotional, social, cultural, and physical environments can both damage and heal young minds. And they challenge the model that maintains that psychological disturbance is genetic and thus requires medication. This is riveting reading for all who care about the youngest members of society.

Over the past 15 years, there has been a 300 percent increase in the use of psychotropic medications with girls and boys under the age of 20, and prescriptions for preschoolers have skyrocketed. A stellar group of authors from across disciplines explains this increase, questions the causes, and presents disturbing thoughts regarding this phenomenon as they describe the risks it creates for children. While there are certainly extreme cases where drugs are the only option, medication rather than psychotherapy and counseling has become the first choice for treatment rather than a last resort.
The experts who joined forces for this book take an in-depth look at the conditions that have led to drugging our children, and stress how emotional, social, cultural, and physical environments can both damage and heal young minds. The so-called medical model, one maintaining that psychological disturbance is genetic and thus requires medication, is challenged in this volume. Contributors range from a pediatrician who has testified before Congress and been featured in a Time magazine cover story, to a top child psychiatrist who is an official for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, along with a well-known child psychiatrist, psychologists, environmentalists, and a public policy consultant. This is riveting reading for all who care about the youngest members of society.

Among other issues, this work looks at controversy over whether psychiatric medications are safe or effective for children--and what little we know about their effect on still-developing brains--as well as the role of corporate interests in the increased use of psychotropics for children. Chapters address the role of environment in both causing and curing disorders more and more often diagnosed in our youngsters: from ADHD, depression, and anxiety to eating disorders. The core questions addressed by this sage group of contributors are these: Why are so many children being diagnosed with psychiatric disturbances and given drugs? Why have drugs become the first treatment of choice to deal with those disorders?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275985229
• ISBN13: 9780275985226
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

How did we get to this place?

No Child Left Different is a thoughtful and in-depth explanation of how we got to the over diagnosed, over prescribed and overmedicated state in which much of our population finds itself today. Most alarmingly, this book shows how our children became a target market for the same tactics. It's shameful and maddening but it certainly does help to understand how we got there if we're ever going to get our children back.

For anyone who knows a child

This is one of those books I bought for the title. The title is a play on the notorious No Child Left Behind act and its role in federal education policy, notorious not only for its lack of funding, but also for its excessive reliance on standardized testing. My only regret with No Child Left Different is that it did not take on that particular set of villains. Nonetheless, the title does reflect an important philosophy, one that called to me from its title, with which I was not at all disappointed. Its multiple authors critique the prevailing attitudes in mental health and social policy which have led to the sharp increases in psychiatric diagnoses for children, as well as the growing reliance on "medication" to treat the identified "disorders". Their concerns are grounded in the need to accept children (and ultimately adults as well) as they are, with all their quirks intact, if not actively encouraged. They also provide scathing and well documented accounts of the lack of testing of the drugs that are prescribed to children, as well as the dysfunctional responses in the face of predictable side effects--notably the truly frightening trend towards "polypharmacy". Unlike many critical works, this book does not fail to provide alternatives, but does in fact discuss other, safer and more humane approaches to helping children whose behavioral and social difficulties they do not deny. The strength of a multi-authored work is the variety of perspectives and alternatives available. Certainly, some chapters are more compelling than others: Chapter 3, "The Dance of Nature and Nurture" provides answers for those who might otherwise worry about appearing "unscientific"; Chapter 9, "The Rise of Ritalin" highlights specific medication concerns; and, Chapter 6, "Child Psychiatry, Drugs, and the Corporation" attests to the needs of scientists to know more about politics. The target audience for this book appears at first glance to be professionals, but it is highly accessible, and I think urgent reading for anyone whose life includes children. It needs to reach a larger market.