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Over the last two decades, we have seen a dramatic spike in the numbers of young people taking psychiatric medication. As new drugs have come on the market and diagnoses have proliferated, prescriptions have increased many times over. The issue has sparked heated debates, with most arguments breaking down into predictable pro-med advocacy or anti-med jeremiads. Yet, we’re heard little from the “medicated kids” themselves.
The Medicated Generation that Kaitlin Barnett speaks of is my generation of kids that were raised in what was considered the medicinal age. When breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals and neuroscience brought on the spike of anti-depressants. Some called it the Prozac Era and I grew up with many of the people who walking into the line of medicated assistance.
As a tween/teen I grew up extremely depressed, in many ways I resembled the people she found in her stories. It was quite a disastrous and awful part of my life that I am thankful that after all of these years I no longer have much recollection of and actually trying to look back is like looking into a black hole. It simply doesn’t exist. I wouldn’t say I grew out of it more than I was someone who figured out my issues early on, recognized them for what they were and then kept myself in check. I accepted them as a part of myself and then eventually I became a part of them as well. I bring this up only to explain that I had great empathy towards this story. There is a large part of it, and I assume many people, that brings in the wonder of whether the medication generation are themselves or what their medications shifted them into being.
Some interesting points I found in this book were:
- The discussions regarding the “chemical imbalance” paradigm.
- Children’s self-discovery or teenage identity development in differing modes of treatment.
- The relationship between anti-depressant treatment and the course of bi-polar disorder.
- The relationship between ADHD and bi-polar disorder.
- The discussion of long-term effects of drugs on sexual functioning into adulthood.
- The psychological impact of medications on children growing into adulthood.
The book focuses on five case studies: Claire-whose story starts at age
eleven -suffered from symptoms of depression and insomnia and had a
family history of mental illness; Elizabeth-who is introduced at age
twelve-is the child of a protracted divorce who is left without much
supervision of her medication for depression and ADHD; Paul-whose story
starts at age five-is caught up in the foster care system and an
abundance of instability in his home life leads to him being heavily
medicated for anger and hyperactivity issues; Caleb-whom the book
introduces at age twelve-is an only child who was the victim of severe
bullying at school which leads to post traumatic stress disorder and the
later diagnosis of bipolar disorder; and Alex-introduced at age
eighteen-who was emotionally abused by a step-parent and suffered a
relapse of the OCD and depression that he had been diagnosed with as a
child.
