The Solution May Be a Problem

[IHT 특약] Experts Alarmed by Ranks of Young Children Taking Potent Drugs

[편집자 주 - 너무 어린 아이들이 강력한 향정신성 의약품에 쉽게 노출되어 있다는 기사입니다]

At 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician to quell the boy's severe tempter tantrums.

Thus began a troubled toddler's journey from one doctor to another, from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs.  Autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder.  The boy's daily pill regimen multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal [리스페달], the antidepressant Prozac [프로작], two sleeping medicines and one for attention-deficit disorder.  All by the time he was 3.

He was sedated, drooling and overweight from the side effects of the antipsychotic medicine.  Although his mother, Brandy Warren, had been at her "wit's end" when she resorted to the drug treatment, she began to worry about Kyle's altered personality.

"All I had was a medicated little boy," Ms. Warren said.  "I didn't have my son.  It's like, you'd look into his eyes, and you would just see just blankness."

Today, Kyle, 6, is in his forth week of first grade, scoring high marks on his first tests.  He is rambunctious and much thinner.  Weaned off the drugs through a program affiliated with Tulane University in New Orleans [U.S.A.] that is aimed at helping low-income families whose children have mental health problems, Kyle now laughs easily and teases his family.

Ms. Warren and Kyle's new doctors point to his remarkable progress - and a more common diagnosis for children of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder - as proof that he should have never been prescribed such powerful drugs in the first place.