When I woke up this morning I was pretty upbeat that today would be a pretty good day. As soon as the dog threw up fifteen minutes after I got up, I conceded the fact today would not be my day. Then I read this story in today's New York Times about the huge increase in the number of antipsychotic prescriptions being written for tweens and teens. According to the article, researchers analyzed data from a national survey of doctors' office visits. The researchers found that antipsychotic drugs were prescribed 1,438 times for every 100,000 children, up from just 275 children previously. The results were based on doctor office visits in 2002 compared to 1993, so these aren't even the most up to date results and one has to think this trend of prescribing chill out pills has only grown or at least remained consistent. I will not go into a huge rant about how over-prescribing "type A" kids with drugs will cause long term harm not only to the child, but society in the longer term (long term use causes other health problems like diabetes, liver problems, etc) but hey, aren't kids just following along parents who down Ambien and the like every night? The release of this new study is sure to cause even more debate in already heated topic of discussion.
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