We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication
Publisher: Penguin Group, 336 pages
Mental illness is an uncomfortable topic. Mental illness in children is taboo. Treating mental illness in children with medication is an outrage. Abusing the use of these medications is a tragedy…These are the concepts that most headlines promote in our society.
When Judith Warner, the New York Times bestselling author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, began doing research for We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication, she was clear that between irresponsible parents, greedy psychiatrists and the corrupt pharmaceutical industry, she was going to consolidate evidence that children who were diagnosed with mental illness were basically being mistreated and the horrors that resulted must be stopped.
She was wrong.
What she has found is proof that children with mental illnesses such as ADHD, Ausberger’s disease, autism and other mental illnesses are going undiagnosed, undermedicated, misunderstood and the parents of those children are frustrated, confused and unsupported. Through a series of detailed examinations, Ms. Warner explains how society got here: a wide variety of mental illnesses in children were not even acknowledged until the 1980s; scandals that actually did occur regarding the relationships between pharmaceutical companies, psychiatrists and researchers have convoluted the issue; and the media’s emphasis on sensationalizing stories of parents drugging children for performance enhancement has left people outraged. These and other circumstances have created a quagmire of families that need serious help, but can’t, won’t and don’t get it because they fear the negative repercussions to themselves and their children.
This book is an incredible eye opener for anyone who deals with children in any capacity. It is insightful, detailed, exceptionally well-documented and debunks myths that need to be attacked in order to bring a brighter light to a dim discussion on addressing mental illness in children. To support this idea, this book has been selected to receive the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s 2010 Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting. For more information on mental illness, the Georgia chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness can be found here.
You may find a copy of this book at your local library in the Atlanta-Fulton public library system, or at your local Barnes and Noble bookseller.
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