| Atticus Grinch |
11-24-2008 08:48 PM |
Re: Advice?
Quote:
Originally Posted by credit this
(Post 372337)
From the perspective of an East coast suburban environment in which folks have the money to pay for a chemical solution and social acceptability of the same is reasonably high, I would submit
Antidepressants:teenage girls :: stimulants:elementary school boys.
There is plenty of overprescribing. Also, there are more kids than you would think with genuine, organic needs. With ADD, the needs are easier to see, esp. to someone not living with the kid. I guess it's scary either way as the uncle -- either there is a serious problem that you aren't in a position to see, or there is some serious medication going on unnecessarily.
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Since I regard all good parenting as a series of bad mistakes motivated by good intentions, such that you feel like a shitheel when you're grown up enough to realize that maybe your parents weren't wrong about everything, I have every reason to believe Niece will eventually turn out okay. What matters is exactly what flavor of okay. If she spends the rest of her life on a pill because "I have anxiety and need treatment or everything feels bad" is the only identity she's ever known, she'll be in the same position as a number of adults and I'm sure she'll be a productive member of society and everything.
Part of me thinks that my objection to medication is that this bombshell was apparently not preceded by any kind of serious consideration of lifestyle factors, i.e., they'll give her a pill for her anxiety but she'll stay at her large academically demanding comprehensive high school and keep her AP classes and go to college, just like all of her classmates also on Xanax. Because she just needs to get through this so she can be a stress case in college, grad school and hamster wheel, I guess.
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