Five-year-olds treated for depression and anxiety page

[Lewis]

Children as young as five are being referred for treatment for depression and anxiety, the BBC has found.

Figures showed mental health teams in Sussex are working with more than 1,000 under-18s while in the Solent 324 young people were referred for therapy. ...

BBC News - Five-year-olds treated for depression and anxiety

To be sure we have difficult social situations. And, what's not mentioned here, large factors such as the collapse of religious belief (I'm not making a religious point here -- I'm not a religious person -- but a sociological one) and almost a de-culturation of people.

However, psychological and sociological explanations are one thing. One question that is not even raised in the article is: "What are these children eating?"

[vtphoenix]

At that point, it's not just what were the children eating, it's what were the mothers eating while pregnant? It always disheartens me to see children, especially young children, on medications. Considering the brain continues to develop into adulthood, and the brains of 5 and 6 year olds are barely developed, medications severly alter the course of development. Essentially, if you give prescriptions to a 5 or 6 year old for any length of time beyond a few days, the likelihood they'll have to be treated for such things well into their adult life increases dramatically.

CW for food, and CW for emotions/psychology need to change dramatically to see any improvement. Popping pills does not make the problem go away. It stunts your growth.

[js290]

The Medicated Child | FRONTLINE | PBS

[Annana]

I was just thinking, we've only been eating altered, unnatural food for a few generations, so maybe this is the long term effects starting to appear after 3 generations of bad eating. I definitely think food is the main culprit, as well as things like vitamin D deficiency.

It's all very depressing, and I'm so glad I found this way of life while my daughter was still a baby.

[JennaRose]

wow. how terrible

[Saoirse]

WTH??

Having developed a deep-seated fear of leaving his mother he has been seeing child behaviour experts since he was 18 months old.

"The anxieties, I think started probably very soon after he was born," said child psychologist Jo Russell.

WHAT?? they're surprised that an 18 month old had anxiety about leaving his mother?? am i missing something here?

Child psychologist Jo Russell said difficulties within the family can cause stress in children

no shit.

[Lewis]

At that point, it's not just what were the children eating, it's what were the mothers eating while pregnant?

Yes, maybe that, too.

I suppose another aspect is the way doctors see the patient's problems. So currently they see a child as "depressed" and hence:

Prescriptions for Fluoxetine, more commonly known as Prozac, have risen 26% in Oxfordshire and 13% in Berkshire from April to September last year.

But I learnt something pretty horrifying from Sean Croxton's podcast today. He was interviewing a professor of psychiatry, who said that doctors used to characterize people as "anxious". Now apparently about the time the patents on anti-anxiety medications began to run out, the pharmaceutical companies switched to selling patented anti-depressants and managed to convince doctors that patients were, in fact, "depressed". (And, in fact, as the patents on anti-depressants run out, doctors are now being conned into "seeing" bipolar disorder instead.) This professor says that doctors are the most intensively advertised at people in the world -- the ad budgets of pharmaceutical companies dwarf what's spent by someone like Apple on advertising something like the iPhone and Apple's ads are aimed at millions of people, not a subset of the population. However, doctors believe themselves to be wise and rational and scientific and simply don't understand that they're being manipulated. Here's the link. (But I must start a new thread on this podcast it's so astonishingly informative even by Sean's normal high standards.)

Pharmageddon How Big Pharma Hijacked Healthcare 05/30 by Underground Wellness | Blog Talk Radio

The situation would seem to be that SSRIs are not going to help these children. SSRIs are a marketing exercise with almost no real science behind them. In fact, there's a darn good chance they'll harm the kids. But in any case, are the children "depressed" or "anxious" or should they be characterized in some other way? Are they disturbed because of difficult social situations? (In some cases, doubtless -- the BBC throws in the story of the child lowering the toy out of the window.) Is their brain chemistry disrupted by bad diets or environmental pollutants?

But whatever the nature of their disturbance and whatever its cause or causes, SSRIs are not going to help, and maybe that's the real story here ...

[billp]

This is going to be a straightforward matter of feeding growing children 0 fat milk, lot fat and low protein in general, and no animal fats at all.

I am not going to read the article because the BBC are a pack of liars and if you start paying attention to things they produce it curdles your mind.

[namelesswonder]

^Interesting that you say that, considering how awful American media is (like Fox News). BBC comes across as a godsend for us.

[billp]

Well, i'ts not. It is the British Government's broadcasting arm (owned outright and board of directors are political appointments). It is a giant squid squeezing out all independent media (they dominate radio and local radio too), as well as running websites, and they never tire of pumping out disgusting biased propaganda.

They just need closing down outright. They've got their special tax they get to collect themselves, on TV sets. Around about the $200 equivalent a year mark, the last time I looked (which is not very frigging often). Then if you don't pay it them send their employees round to try to trick their way into your house (even thought they have no legal right to do that) to see if you own a TV and send you threatening letters every two weeks threatening jail, prosecution etc. They are real scum and have poisoned what used to be a free country. They have also been maintaining a fifty year hoax of "Detector Vans", which are supposed to be able to detect TV sets using Van Eck phreaking, but no one has ever seen one even though they freely advertise "TV detector vans are working in your areas. Six houses in this street are unlicensed".