A disturbing but interesting article. I am an attorney in a small town in Ohio and a lot of my practice involves domestic custody cases and juvenile court cases. In the juvenile court cases, at least a third of the kids I deal with are medicated, and I don't think I can remember even one kid who has been medicated that isn't taking a least two different medications. The worst I've seen is a kid who at one point was on incredibly high doses of eight meds. The kids usually see the prescribing doctor once every three or four months; they are usually poor, and their parents are always overwhelmed by the kids and their problems.

What is going on is a fear of these kids and, in most of the cases, a refusal to deal with their real problems with more expensive talk theories. We give them some dope and stick them away.

It's strange and quite scary: Kids who do the kinds of things I did when I was in school (in the '50s and '60s) are considered "disturbed" and in need of some very serious mind-altering medication; but if they drink beer or smoke dope, they are criminals.

-- Ronald C. Couch

Waters does readers a disservice by continually intermingling the use of stimulant medications such as Ritalin with antidepressants. Ritalin has been studied for more than 30 years, and has never shown any significant long-term problems. A recent study found it was most likely underprescribed rather than overprescribed. Attention deficit hyperactive disorder, while sometimes found with depression, is a completely different disorder and it makes little sense to try to focus on both at once.

-- Patricia Saperstein

The only thing the recent school shooters have in common -- aside from being male and young -- was the fact that they were all prescribed medication:

• Shawn Cooper, Ritalin, blasted shotgun inside school.
• Eric Harris, Luvox, Columbine H.S.
• T.J. Solomon, Ritalin, shot six of his schoolmates.
• Kip Kinkel, Ritalin and Prozac, blasted parents and killed two at his school -- and wounded 22.

Maybe psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz, director of New York University's Child Study Center (obviously an advocate for medicating children) should get into counseling himself.

-- Jeffrey Abelson
New York

I am 19, and I have been taking some sort of mood medication, on and off, since I was 8. I believe that taking Ritalin at an early age has partially caused my ongoing sleep disorders. Diagnosed with ADD (as it was then called), I "grew out of it" at about 10 and stopped taking Ritalin. At 13, when I was besieged with depression, a psychiatrist put me on Prozac after talking to me for 10 minutes. But without a mood stabilizer, I became manic. In one horrifying instance, I was put on Halidol to control delusions, and I shook so hard I frightened my schoolmates.

Managed care is the scourge of modern medicine. Neurology, especially children's neurology, is little understood, as are the ramifications of mind-altering drugs, but self-absorbed yuppie parents would rather dope up their kids than address their family problems.

-- Lillie Wade

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