At 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’s severe temper tantrums.
Thus began a troubled toddler’s journey from one doctor to another, from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs. Autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder. The boy’s daily pill regimen multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and one for attention-deficit disorder. All by the time he was 3.
He was sedated, drooling and overweight from the side effects of the antipsychotic medicine. Although his mother, Brandy Warren, had been at her “wit’s end” when she resorted to the drug treatment, she began to worry about Kyle’s altered personality. “All I had was a medicated little boy,” Ms. Warren said. “I didn’t have my son. It’s like, you’d look into his eyes and you would just see just blankness….”
No wonder people no longer automatically respect a doctor’s advice anymore.
The PC crowd has preempted disciplinary measures to help kids this age. All kids are hyperactive and “bipolar” until they get grown. Parents are getting no traing on raising kids. Everyone wants a pill to solve any problem and NOW. Will get worse.
Back when I saw kids with neurological illnesses, I scheduled an hour and one half (all unreimbursed) as so many of them had REAL learning disorders such as auditory processing disorder or visual processing disorders, or seizures, or migraines or sleep disorders. The only child whom I ever put on stimulants and sleep study documented narcolepsy. I took tons of kids off their antipsychotics, stimulants etc.
I did this because I have two adopted kids, one of whom would easily have been diagnosed as mentally retarded, ADD, bipolar and conduct disorder during part of her life, and now is normal. Another would easily have been diagnosed as autistic but now is normal. Neither had meds but both had unimaginable amounts of work. My eldest spent every night being tutored by myself until past 10pm. Every weekend had four hours minimum of tutoring, sometimes more. Learning disorders are remediable, but they are horrible to a parent’s life style. I spent huge amounts on speech therapists, social interventions, not to mention vision therapy, fast forward etc.
I also tried to get this for my patients. I have paid over 20,000 for interventions (like fast forward) out of pocket (not reimbursable by the IRS) for specific patients with learning disorders, and found that 80% of the parents wouldn’t even bother to do the work even if it was free. I eventually ended up setting up some interventions through certain institutions like the Autism institute. (I also got some of them into my local public schools).
More than 1/2 hour of the 90 minutes I set aside for a new pediatric patient was spent arguing with parents who “just wanted a pill” rather than to do the work involved in getting a kid normal.
The only complaints I ever received as a physician (to my superiors) was from parents, who felt that I was “too strict” and “expected too much”. This despite the fact that I was the only neurologist in a 300 mile radius who saw kids, (most don’t need the hassle) and the only one who took medicare.
Eventually, as pediatric neurology was destroying my practice I, like every other neurologist in my area, left the field. Therefore the only folks who see kids are psychologists who believe this stuff and tell parents what they wish to hear.
So it will get worse. Because an “easy life” is what most parents want. They really don’t care about their children. And certainly most parents seem to abandon their children at 18.
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/31896/#comments
Please see my comments on the thread below on “empowered” patients on how this problem was caused by “empowerd students”.
I might add, that one of the major factors that made me give up the practice of pediatric neurology was when a parent went so far as to complain to the medical board that I was “unprofessional” for refusing to agree to give her a letter asking for “accomodations” for her 5 year old son saying he was “Bipolar” and had “ADHD” or to assist in getting him disability for the same. She also complained that I failed to practice “evidence based medicine” because the “standard of care” was to treat children with stimulants for school difficulties, and I refused to do so.
The board ruled in my favor. I later got a lawyers letter asking for records (which I provided) but that did not seem to go anywhere.
At any rate, I am glad to be out of pediatric neurology. The kids were great. The parents sucked.
Of note, “evidence based medicine” (which includes simply giving kids antipsychotics instead of actually spending the time and money to make them better) features heavily in the new Health Care Reform.
You guys wanted it. You voted for it. Enjoy.
Oh by the way, this weekend I received the first fruits of “Health Care Reform” in the mail. The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) has agreed to insist that all folks who are board certified physicians meet a new “performance in practice” requirement in order to maintain their status as being “board certified”. The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) (which is under the ABMS, and which certifies both psychiatrists and neurologists) will now not only require repeat examinations every 10 years, and 50 hours of continous medical education yearly, but will require us to submit 5 charts in each subject area (50 charts every 2 years) (stroke, seizures, headaches, neuromucular diseases, neurooncology – there are about 10 areas which includes PEDIATRICS if you are practicing it) to ensure that we are ALL practicing “EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE” and are “continually improving. It also will ensure that we are not commiting “medicare fraud” (and the usual “fraud” is failing to document a social or family history when seeing a patient), and will remove “bad” physicians from practice. (It will also cost me another 2000/year, not counting the hassle, but that is a lesser problem)
So if I had remained in Pediatric neurology, I guess I would have been forced to put kids on antipsychotics or have my board certification (and likely medical license) stripped.
So I guess that does make me feel better. I have been feeling rather guilty about leaving Pediatric Neurology. It does mean that kids with neurologal diseases have to be airlifted 300 miles away and are separated from their families, and it does mean that some kids will die. But I guess this is the way the pro-life Obstetricians felt 20 years ago when refusing to perform abortions became “unprofessional”, and all the Pro-life OB/Gyes had to stop delivering babies, and focus on simply treating venerial disease and cervical cancer.
Oh, I imagine that part of the new “EVIDENCE BASED GUIDELINES” will include much stricter definitions of “futile care” and folks who work too hard to save older patients will also be found to be “unprofessional” or “greedy” or committing “health care fraud” and certainly failing to provide the “standard of ‘care'”.
Thanks again liberals. My only comfort is my certain knowledge that you personally will not escape the consequences of what you have done.