Ethical and societal implications of the rising trend in medicating youth
Assignment Instructions: Discuss some of the Ethical and societal implications of the rising trend in medicating youth, especially those in economically disadvantaged groups. In your response, be sure to link to medicating kids as a “political act” as discussed in the lecture. What does this mean and use examples from the material to make your point.
Linking specifically to the Anastasia reading and some of the examples from the Karp reading, offer a discussion of what the political act of medicating kids means to these young people. Linking to previous modules, discuss the power imbalances between kids and providers. Conclude with your thoughts on the ethical and social implications of prescribing anti psychotics to children, particularly those who are already structurally vulnerable.
https://csusm.instructure.com/courses/37802/files/7046898/download?download_frd=1 I will send the article
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Hey everybody, Bienvenidos to a little lecture about young people.
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Excuse me, this one, really This is a topic that I really wish we were in person for.
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Always talking about what happens to our young people can be pretty upsetting.
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It\’s super interesting topic though for understanding power and politics in the mental health community.
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We tend to track things like ADHD as or ADD as they relate to young people, but other categories are not as closely tracked.
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Things like depression and anxiety and what what is some kids are labeled as oppositional defiant disorder and things like that.
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But we can see that one thing we do track is the number of prescriptions for young people and what\’s happening there.
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And we do see that since the late 1990s, the number of youth who have been prescribed psychotropic medications have more than doubled.
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So this is mostly stimulant medication for things like ADHD.
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But we\’ve also seen a huge rise in other psychotropic Tropic drugs and a huge rise in medicating kids under the age of five, which used to be unheard of.
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So some of the drugs prescribed to kids are very powerful drugs.
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Big pharmaceutical has made record-breaking profits, which is easy for you to do a little research on.
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And much of that profit was done on the backs of poor and made as the result a very specific political connections to politics.
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All right, all right.
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I just want to wrap up with a quick conversation about another very vulnerable group of young people that are sadly a little too easy to exploit.
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Foster youth 13 times more likely to to be prescribed medications than than non foster youth.
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99% of foster youth are prescribed medications that are these so-called newer generations of drugs.
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They\’re more expensive but not covered under Medicaid sometimes.
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So, you know, covered in different ways.
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Most foster youth are prescribed multiple psych meds, which is quite disturbing.
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The expansion of use of drugs for kids under 10 is also concerning.
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Research shows that these kind of higher doses and using multiple site meds for kids under a particular age can result in very serious side effects and sometimes long term side effects.
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So these are not benign drugs.
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As you know, we\’ve seen a rise in what we call blanket authorizations, and that is where a group home for foster youth are given this kind of blanket authorization to prescribe medication without going through the usual channels to do so.
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And so that has meant that that practitioners can avoid some of the usual screening exams that come along with prescribing medications.
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More than half of young people who live in these residential homes are taking psychiatric drugs.
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A majority of of them are taking multiple.
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So children who come into foster care have often been exposed to multiple traumatic events, including the removal from their families, and obviously are at higher risk for mental health issues.
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Too often multiple medications are used without other kinds of effective treatments that might better under that, that might better address the underlying trauma that they might be experiencing.
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And, you know, some children in foster care are subjected to some really powerful medications at very young ages or in combinations that are unsafe for children of any age.
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Many of the drugs that are being used are not even approved for use in children at all, but are being used anyways.
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And a lot of those lawsuits are connected to that.
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Yet we find even now, big pharmaceutical companies continue to push for expanding their drugs to younger and younger kids, drugs that are already being used for adults.
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So this is a theme that we see that kind of comes up over and over with the use of particular medications to to, you know, to expand the diagnostic categories that they could be used for as well as the populations that are allowed to take them, in this case for young people.
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So I\’m going to end there.
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I hope you learned a little something.
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I know it\’s kind of a disturbing and sad topic, umm, but so important to pay attention to.
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