Monday, February 13, 2012

When the Kids Grow Up on Meds



Check out Kaitlin Bell Barnett's blog over on Psych Central.  She's a young journalist who has a book coming out called Dosed: The Medication Generation Grows Up.  Kaitlin interviewed people who've been on medication since they were children/teens and gets their perspectives.  I'm looking forward to reading this one--- it's a really important topic because we know so little about long term treatment of people with developing brains.  She got funding on Kickstarter.com and you can watch her talk about her book on the video above.

5 comments:

werentme said...

First generation? People who began taking meds as kids and "ten or twenty' years later are still taking them? Try 30 years later and counting. I was started on psychiatric meds as a teenager and still take them. No one had heard of Prozac in those days. No one had heard of Zyprexa. I know I was not the only one. Since I am not a baby boomer, please don't comment that the boomers feel they invented everything, including growing up on meds.

Sarebear said...

I've funded a board/card game or two in the past on kickstarter; that's what our 15th anniversary present was . . . problem is it won't be here til May at the earliest rofl.

I didn't even think of psych stuff on there. Good topic!@

Sunny CA said...

werentme: Do baby boomers feel they invented everything? I have never heard that.

I am a baby boomer (1951) and would not dream of saying my generation grew up on psych meds. We were the generation of "The Pill" for birth control, but the first I heard of psych meds was after I was out of college and a friend was given Valium because her husband was killed in an auto accident. She could barely stay awake while standing up and talking and I remember wondering why grief would be treated in that manner. The novel "Valley of the Dolls" was the first I heard of recreational drug use. The younger sibling of my best friend in grammar school developed schizophrenia in her senior year in high school and I remember that several years later her Dad, who was a college president of a large school, had made a connection with someone developing a drug that might help treat schizophrenia. There just was not much of anything available, good, bad or indifferent and at that point everyone was hopeful that drugs might finally be available, and eager to find something that worked.

werentme said...

Sunny,

I can't say for sure about individual boomers. It was tongue in cheek. I wrote it because the woman in the video is obviously not a boomer and I was waiting to be accused of being one. But seriously,everyone likes to say they were the first generation to _________(fill in the blank). Boomers do have a reputation, whether it is deserved or not. I notice that their influence is waning as they age, at least in some things. For example, when their collective middle age spread hit, companies traditionally geared to skinny youth began to make jeans in sizes they had never carried. Now they have switched gears to appeal to the echo boomers and you need to be a size nothing to wear their clothes. I am stuck in between, like a middle child. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. (reruns)

Kimberly said...

Back in High School I was told I needed to be on Zoloft. I decided everyone else has the problem.. and not me. I denied anything was wrong with me.. and convinced myself none will control me for like another 5 or 6 years. Now sometimes when I'm trying to be honest with myself.. I realized life could of been different for me if I would if listened and got the help I needed. I was already in therapy and they thought I was going go harm myself. After being diagnosed Manic Depressive (more depressed... Now Bipolar II) Who'da thunk?