A grocery store pharmacy in Quebec Canada was giving out psychiatric drugs for Halloween treats this year. A mother accidentally dropped divalproex (Depakote) and quetiapine (Seroquel) pills that she had picked up for her son. Other customers picked up the pills, which were wrapped in a blister packet, and placed them on the counter next to a candy basket. Somehow the pills were mixed in with the candy. “Seven of the pills ended up in the hands and bags of trick-or-treating children.”

A Constable said that an employee mixed the medications in with the candy by accident. But one mother said she immediately recognized the pills were drugs and took them away from her daughter who had “chewed and spat out the drugs distributed by mistake.” The “mistake” is puzzling, as the girl’s mother said: “It was a transparent bag, with the name of the person, the drug, the dosage, the pharmacist and the date and time the prescription was filled; October 31 at 8 a.m. in the morning,”

Police told parents that the pills weren’t dangerous, but that is just not true. The medication guide for quetiapine lists potential side effects as: the risk of suicidal thoughts or actions, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, irritability, anger or aggression, unusual changes in mood or behavior. The medication guide for divalproex lists similar potential side effects: the risk of suicidal thoughts or actions, depression, anxiety, agitation or restlessness, anxiety, irritability, anger or aggression, unusual changes in mood or behavior. And it can cause serious liver damage in children younger than 2 years old. Granted, these adverse effects would in all probability not occur if a child had wrongly ingested one pill, but the describing the pills as not dangerous was deceitful. Read more on this incident at The Fix or Vice.

Seroquel is an antipsychotic medication and Depakote is an anti-seizure medication that carries the label of “mood stabilizer” when used as a psychiatric medication. Antipsychotics are frequently combined with mood stabilizers in the treatment of bipolar disorder. A September 2105 study published in JAMA Psychiatry, “Treatment of Young People with Antipsychotic Medications in the United States,” examined at the prescription patterns among young people in the United States. The study looked at four age groups: younger children (1-6 years), older children (7-12 years), adolescents (13-18 years), and young adults (19-24 years).

The researchers found that most of the individuals treated with antipsychotics did not have a medical claim that included a mental disorder diagnosis. The percentages by age group were as follows: younger children (60.0%), older children (56.7%), adolescents (62.0%), and young adults (67.1%). When there was a diagnosis, the most common one was ADHD with younger children (52.5%), older children (60.1%) and adolescents (34.9%). Depression was the most commonly given diagnosis among young adults (34.5%).

Consistent with clinical diagnoses suggesting that antipsychotics are primarily used to manage impulsive or aggressive behaviors in children associated with ADHD, the highest rate of antipsychotic treatment was in adolescent boys, approximately half of whom also filled prescriptions for stimulants. Young adults treated with antipsychotics were more frequently diagnosed as having depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorder than ADHD.

A National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) press release on the study, quoted a co-author, Michael Schoenbaum, as saying antipsychotics should be prescribed with care. “They can adversely affect both physical and neurological function and some of their adverse effects can persist even after the medication is stopped.” He added what was particularly important about the study’s findings was that 1.5% of boys aged 10-18 are on antipsychotics. This rate was abruptly cut in half as adolescents become young adults.

In the current study, the combination of peak use of antipsychotics in adolescent boys and the diagnoses associated with prescriptions (often ADHD) suggest that these medications are being used to treat developmentally limited impulsivity and aggression rather than psychosis.

Mad in America quoted Dr. Christopher Correll, the medical director of the New York State Office of Mental Health, who noted that the powerful and almost immediate problems with antipsychotics can include weight gain and high glucose levels (a possible precursor of diabetes). “Prescribing antipsychotics seems predominantly aimed at aggressive and impulsive behaviors, especially in males, where the disruption in school and home insists on action and remediating symptoms.”

The study commented how the above noted decrease in prescribed antipsychotics after adolescence may be due to the normal maturation of neurobiological systems in late adolescence and early adulthood. “This normal maturation of neurobiological systems may underlie the decrease in antipsychotic treatment prevalence during late adolescence among youth who do not have enduring cognitive impairments and long-term severe behavioral disorders.” High rates of coprescribing antipsychotics with other classes of drugs were observed across all age groups. Stimulants (probably for ADHD) were the most commonly prescribed psychotropic class during preadolescent years.

A likely outcome in these cases is that agitation from the ADHD stimulants contributes to an increase in aggression among preadolescents, which results in the prescription of an antipsychotic to address the aggression. Dr. Peter Breggin said: “The antipsychotic drugs are often given to children when their behavior and mental state deteriorates as a result of being given stimulants.”  Follow the link here to a page on his website where he discusses the potential harm from the psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of children. The page includes links to several videos in his Simple Truth series on YouTube that address topics such as: the harmful effects and action of stimulant drugs; and the negative effects of diagnosing children with ADHD. There is also a link to one of his articles published in Children & Society that “presents a scientific and ethical overview of the harm done to children by stimulants and by antipsychotics.”

The drugging of children in America and increasingly throughout the world is a tragedy.  Millions upon millions of children and youth will never know their full potential because they grew up with an intoxicated brain — their neurotransmitters forever deformed by being bathed in these drugs during their formative years.  Additional millions will become career consumers of psychiatric drugs with a vastly reduced quality of life and shortened lives.