More on Children and the so-called ADHD

More than 18,000 children in Florida currently receiving atypical antipsychotic medication for conditions ranging from ADHD to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
If you look at the track on this, you’ll see that the number of children in the Florida Medicaid program prescribed these powerful drugs has nearly doubled from 9,364 kids in 2000 to 18,137 in 2006. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported this.

Among those children, the most common primary diagnosis was attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) -- an ailment not approved for treatment with antipsychotics by the Food and Drug Administration or by experts on the disease.
According to state guidelines, Medicaid will pay for a drug only if it is "medically necessary and prescribed for medically accepted indications," so evidently, based off of these stats, there are a lot of psychiatrists prescribing these powerful drugs when the mental illnesses they are prescribed for cannot be medically confirmed.

International Warnings on Psychiatric Drugs:
January 2008: The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency issued an update to the product labeling and all antidepressants patient information leaflets to include information on the increased risk of suicide for children to young adults.
January 31, 2008: The FDA put out a warning to healthcare professionals about the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior with Antiepileptic drugs. “The increased risk of suicidal behavior and suicidal ideation was observed as early as one week after starting the antiepileptic drug and continued through 24 weeks.”
February 5, 2008: A direction was issued by the UK Government's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, that antidepressant manufacturers will be soon receiving letters asking them to update the warnings on suicidal thoughts and behavior, to keep in line with European agreements.

In Summary
Over 80 warnings have been issued internationally on the previously undisclosed dangers of psychiatric drugs since October 2004. This comes on the heels of public awareness campaigns by watchdog organizations, independent medical doctors, patients and their families repeatedly requesting independent evaluations of clinical drug trials and accountability for the harm and loss of lives. While drug regulatory agencies such as the FDA should be accountable for failing to act sooner, it must be noted that psychiatrists have been their advisors, and have a vested interest in maintaining a multi-billion dollar psychiatric drug industry.
Psychiatric drug sales have soared in recent years based solely on psychiatry’s criteria for a myriad of “mental disorders,” which are simply a checklist of behaviors, emotions and attitudes. Promoting these disorders as medical conditions requiring drug treatment is misleading to the public, governments and patients.
There are no blood tests, X-rays, brain scans or any scientific/medical means by which psychiatry’s diagnoses can be verified. Subsequently millions of men women and children have been wrongly diagnosed as mentally ill, and prescribed dangerous and potentially lethal psychiatric drugs.

The FDA should not be approving such drugs for mental “disorders” that cannot be medically/scientifically proven to exist.