I am OCD

I am Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I am an anxiety disorder. I give you unwanted, repetitive, ridiculous thoughts and cause you to act on those thoughts every few minutes. I am more common among teens and young adults than anyone else. I might make you think of death or make you feel helpless in a situation you can't control. Because I make you feel this way, you might wash your hands until your skin gets raw, or open the oven exactly ten times, then put the turkey in the oven and take it out exactly ten times. I cause you to convulse so much that your personal life ends up in shambles and it becomes impossible for you to live the happy life you once took for granted.

Medicating Kids With Mental Disorders

Medicating Kids should be an absolute last resort no matter what. All other options, such as therapy or a change in environment or routine, should be exhausted first. A parent should never put a child on medication simply because they cannot handle the child's behavior. However, if the child is exhibiting behaviors like self-injury or hallucinations or other severe behaviors, medication should be used to preserve a normal quality of life.

My sister is on medication for ADHD, but I still don't know if I agree with that decision. When she was three or four, we took her to a psychiatrist because she would have multiple tantrums each day. [To be honest, I always thought it was because my parents let her do whatever she wanted.] The doctor tried therapy first, which didn't really work all that well. She had us record Melanie's behavior every day for a month before deciding to put her on medication. The first medication she was on curved her appetite to the point where she was skin and bones. With the second medication, she would lay on the couch after school each day and say she just wanted to rest. I had never seen a child so still and lifeless, and I think seeing her that way is what made me decide that I did not agree with medicating her. She is now on a medicine that is not actually behavioral, but rather a very low dose of blood pressure medication called Intuniv. She has a healthy appetite and is still very active, but I do still think that she only acts the way she does because she is never told no. I do, however, agree with the way the situation was handled; and I am glad that medicating her was the very last thing they tried, rather than the first.

In September of 2010, a boy named Kyle and his mother were interviewed by the New York Times about medicating kids. At 18 months, Kyle was on about six different medicines because the doctor claimed he was autistic, bipolar, hyperactive, as well as an insomniac. They put him on two sleeping medications, antidepressants, an antipsychotic, and one pill a day for attention deficit; all by the time he was three. The side effects from the medicines made Kyle gain an obscene amount of weight. He also would drool a lot and seem heavily sedated, said his mother. She said that even at three years old, he barely knew how to speak. He couldn't say simple words like mama or dog; words that arguably, he should have known by the age of one. When she realized that Kyle was suffering from all the side effects, she had the doctors wean him off of all the medications except one for attention deficit. At the time of the interview, he was a normal, happy six-year-old boy. His mother said that if she could go back and do it all again, she'd have tried therapy first and never put Kyle on medication (Wilson, Duff). This story is proof that more often than not, medicating a child should be the last resort. The side effects of these strong antipsychotics and other medications designs for adults could rob a kid of the normalcy and personality that they should be guaranteed. 

Also interviewed were seven-year-old Jessica and her mother Elaine. Jessica was put on an antipsychotic at the age of three. Later in the process however, it was discovered that Jessica was not psychotic at all; rather, she had developmental delays as well as an unstable home life. Because of this discovery, Jessica was weaned off the antipsychotic and participated in therapy until she was six, which was too old for the free therapy program. In the interview, the therapist explains that therapies are much more expensive than medication, which is often why low-income families choose medication over therapies. Elaine told NYT that medicating children is a good idea so that the mothers can have a break from the disruptive behavior of their children, and even if doctors asked her to, she would not take Jessica off medication (Wilson, Duff). A doctor clearly stated that Jessica was not psychotic, but instead had developmental delays and an unstable home life. Yet her mother put her back on medication. Children should not be medicated so that their mother's can "have a little break," as Elaine put it. They should be medicated only if the child truly has a disorder.

 In one CNN interview with Dr. Shan Yin, he said that using medication this way can be compared to abuse. He claimed that often the motive of using drugs on children "could widely vary, such as overwhelmed parents looking for a break, amusement, or punishment." He said that "Anytime you're giving a medication for any other purpose other than for what it's explicitly prescribed for, you run the risk of harming your child." Jill Smokler, mother of a 1 1/2 year old girl, said that medicating your kid is "not the end of the world." She blogged about how giving your child Benedryl or cough syrup so they'll sleep is a selfish thing to do, but "sometimes you just need it" (Park, Madison).

A boy named Gavin, 11 at the time of the interview, took 119 pills each week. He has Asperger's syndrome and schizoaffective disorder, which is similar to schizophrenia. Without the medication, he couldn't tell the difference between reality and hallucinations, and often tried to jump out the second story window in his house, saying he could fly. His parents say that without the medication, Gavin wouldn't have a very good life (Park, Madison). This is a classic case where the child clearly needs medication, and there aren't really any other options.

As in the case of my sister, all options should be tried before medication. As in the case of Kyle, if the medication is ruining the child's everyday life, they should be weaned off and either put on different meds, or try a different way of coping. Jessica's mother should not have her daughter on medication just to get a break from her, but there are cases where the child does need help and medication is the only thing that can be afforded. There are cases like Gavin where medication is the only answer, and it should be used so that the child's life can be as normal as possible. But medication should only be used if absolutely necessary.

WORKS CITED

Park, Madison. "Drugging Kids for Parents' Relief Called Abusive." CNN. Cable News Network, 22 July 2010. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/07/22/drugged.children.parenting/index.html>.

 Park, Madison. "Little People, Lots of Pills: Experts Debate Medicating Kids." CNN. Cable News Network, 24 May 2011. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/23/kids.overmedicated/index.html>.

Wilson, Duff. "Child’s Ordeal Shows Risks of Psychosis Drugs for Young." The New York Times. The New York Times, 1 Sept. 2010. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=homepage&src=me>.

Medicating Kids with ADHD [5 Point Blog #13]

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2012/01/01/panic-time-were-running-out-of-adhd-drugs

I have always been on the borderline about medicating kids with mental disorders, especially ADHD. I feel strongly that way too many kids are being treated for ADHD. There are a lot of factors that go into my opinion, though. I'm not saying that ADHD does not exist; I do believe that some kids do have things like ADHD and bipolar, and they should be treated so their childhood can be happy and healthy.

 HOWEVER, I feel that a lot of times, kids are just being kids. If a child is bouncing off the walls, let them outside and let them play. If they are throwing constant tantrums and you just give in all the time, then they are just acting that way because they know it works. I feel like a lot of times, parents jump to medication way too soon. They need to try a different parenting technique, try therapy, try EVERYTHING they can. I feel so strongly that medication should be a last resort. Especially because a lot of this medication can be so dangerous in the long run.

I found a video on TED.com where a guy named Sir Ken Robinson talks about how schools are squashing creativity. About 15 minutes into the video, he tells a very interesting story about a woman who is now a super famous choreographer; however, when she was a young girl, her teacher told her mom that she may have a learning disability because she never stopped moving. It ties into Sir Robinson's speech because the woman figures out that she is a kinesthetic learner, and that type of learning is relatively frowned upon in public schools. 

The point is, this woman didn't have a disability; rather, she had an amazing talent, and if the doctor had put her on medication, she might never have discovered it. If a child truly has a disorder, then they have every right to medication and a normal life. But I strongly believe that there are MANY circumstances where the child just needs to be put in a different environment, or find a different outlet for their energy, or the parents just need to try a new technique, or maybe the child just needs therapy. But medication, whether it's a mental disorder or a physical problem, should ALWAYS be the last resort.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

My Personality [Blog #12]

The results for each of the personality tests that I took are as follows:

big 5 personality 1:
extraversion: 45%
agreeableness: 8%
conscientiousness: 38%
emotional stability: 72%
openness: 45%

big 5 personality 2:
extraversion: 64%
agreeableness [cooperation]: 20%
conscientiousness [dutifulness]: 45%
emotional stability: 73%
openness: 35%

Both of my extraversion scores were kind of in the middle, and my score for agreeableness is quite low for both [which surprises me, but also does not surprise me]. I'm on the lower side of being in the middle region for conscientiousness. I am very emotionally stable, and averagely open to new situations. The tests are pretty reliable; I got very similar scores for both. It was easy to tell which questions were testing whether I was lying, probably because I knew they were going to be there. I didn't lie on any of them, because I didn't really feel threatened by a score I wouldn't like, or one that one effect me negatively. I do feel that I answered the same question differently once or twice simply because the wording made me think differently and therefore answer differently.

MMPI:
ESTP
Extroverted (E) 62.86% Introverted (I) 37.14%
Sensing (S) 55.26% Intuitive (N) 44.74%
Thinking (T) 79.17% Feeling (F) 20.83%
Perceiving (P) 69.23% Judging (J) 30.77%

These letters don't surprise me at all. I sort of thought that my 'judging' score would be higher than my 'perceiving' score, though, because if I'm going to be honest with myself, I am typically a sort of judgmental person.

What is Intelligence? [Blog #11]

Today my five-year-old sister was trying (and failing) to rap at the dinner table. She said something like Yo yo giggity yo, Hope Kathryn is in da house yall and she's eating her din-din-dinner. And at first, my father responded with Don't quit your day job, kid. And as she went on, I think he was starting to get annoyed because her vocabulary was steadily declining, and vocabulary is something we strongly reinforce in our house. When she said Daddy, I wanna be a rapper when I grow up, he had a sort of please-just-shoot-me-now look on his face. Then my seven-year-old sister joined in with the rap about dinner, and my dad said something like The vocabulary you are using does not make you sound intelligent at all, so knock it off. When he said that, I immediately thought of that ridiculous intelligence test we took in class that had to do with 'black vocabulary' and the other one that basically had to do with drugs. And I thought about how when I was reading the first one with the 'black vocabulary' I could hear people saying the words in my head, and it was hard to listen to those voices because they just sounded so unintelligent to me. But after the test I thought to myself that anyone who knows half these words is definitely smarter than I am.