Preschoolers comprise the fastest growing psychiatric-drug-using demographic in the United States.

[link to www.thedailybeast.com]


"Can a 6-year-old commit suicide? That’s the question police are asking after Samantha Kuberski was found hanging from a crib, a belt carefully tied around her neck and tethered to the bars. Samantha’s family says that following a fight with her mother, the young girl announced she was going to kill herself before she was sent to her room, where she apparently did just that. But local police aren’t so sure. "It's not that we disagree with the mechanics of what happened,” said McMinnville, Oregon police Capt. Dennis Marks. “It's the finding that a 6-year-old could form that kind of intent."

But it’s not unheard of for children that young to be treated for depression just like adults are—and parents of depressed children say that sometimes drugs are necessary to prevent incidents like the one in Oregon."

"Extreme as putting a child on antidepressants may sound, according to new research, parents like Morgan may have science on their side. Some experts now believe that chronic depression can affect children as young as 3 years old. The groundbreaking study, published this month in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, found that an astonishing 40 percent of depressed 3- to 6-year-olds remained so over the course of two years, an eternity on a child’s clock.

The response to the study has been swift and largely hostile. “It’s ridiculous, the kinds of feedback we’re getting,” says lead author Joan Lubin, a professor of psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “People immediately assume that we’re pushing some kind of preschooler Prozac thing.” Far from hawking snack-time sedatives, Lubin says her study’s actual aim is to help parents identify when and how to make behavioral adjustments within their family to best support a depressed child.

What’s happened, however, is that Lubin’s findings have shed light on a truly jaw-dropping statistic: Preschoolers comprise the fastest growing psychiatric-drug-using demographic in the United States. Indeed, as many as three in 1,000 children age 6 and under are taking some kind of mental-health medication. And it's not just Ritalin. Prozac and Zoloft are close behind—research now shows that their usage among preschoolers has more than doubled in recent years."