Prescription Pills for Kids Struggling in School
Sort of scary what some doctors and parents turn to, to try to help kids failing in (or being failed by) schools:
Dr. Anderson is one of the more outspoken
proponents of an idea that is gaining interest among some physicians.
They are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools
starved of extra money — not to treat A.D.H.D., necessarily,
but to boost their academic performance.
It is not yet clear whether Dr. Anderson is
representative of a widening trend. But some experts note that as
wealthy students abuse stimulants to raise already-good grades in
colleges and high schools, the medications are being
used on low-income elementary school children with faltering grades and
parents eager to see them succeed.
“We as a society have been unwilling to
invest in very effective nonpharmaceutical interventions for these
children and their families,” said Dr. Ramesh Raghavan, a child
mental-health services researcher at Washington University
in St. Louis and an expert in prescription drug use among low-income
children. “We are effectively forcing local community psychiatrists to
use the only tool at their disposal, which is psychotropic medications.”
Dr. Nancy Rappaport, a child psychiatrist in
Cambridge, Mass., who works primarily with lower-income children and
their schools, added: “We are seeing this more and more. We are using a
chemical straitjacket instead of doing things
that are just as important to also do, sometimes more.”
Dr. Anderson’s instinct, he said, is that of
a “social justice thinker” who is “evening the scales a little bit.” He
said that the children he sees with academic problems are essentially
“mismatched with their environment” — square
pegs chafing the round holes of public education. Because their
families can rarely afford behavior-based therapies like tutoring and
family counseling, he said, medication becomes the most reliable and
pragmatic way to redirect the student toward success.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 4:00 AM
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