#we've got issues

[punkpega]

Living vicariously through a fictional video game cat

[sassinake]

We’ve Got Issues: No Weekly Pay = Weak Sauce

Short and to the point. 

[wantonlywindswept]

look firefox i really do want to like you but i have spent the past fifteen minutes trying to figure out why you are not loading images on various websites or showing thumbnail previews on youtube and have not come up with an actual solution yet, i am in pain and tired just let me see the fucking images so i can check that i’m buying the right cat food

[omgthisisnotmyrealaccount]

why does this country think all of our problems can be solved with a charity single??

[emelcg]

​Yumi Lambert by Rankin Hunger #8 "We've Got Issues"

[jessicamdawn]

Fuck it. I moved back to my old laptop AND sent an ask in the time it took my new comp to load up the ask page. God damn.

[just-under-the-water]

Dude...

Francesca just passed out twice while we were in the shower. Like the first time I didn't really see it and I literally thought she just randomly decided to sit down. When she got up she was like feeling lightheaded and I watched her and she just started like swaying and her eyes kinda rolled back and her head tilted forward and I tried to grab her but I think it just made it worse cause she like slid down the wall and the shelf. Like it was scary. I've always been the one to pass out, it was weird having someone else do it right there. Like shes gonna have some epic bruises.

[msooey]

BOOK REPORT: We've got issues: children and parents in the age of medication

We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication

By Judith Warner  © 2010 Riverhead Books

COMMENTARY: I don’t remember when I wrote this.  I found it on my laptop as I was printing out the book reports I’m recording for the podcast.    I remember writing it and sitting on it because I was worried that I didn’t have a strong enough conclusion or ending…  or maybe because of the delicate controversial nature of the topic – or perhaps my response.  But I decided to post it anyway.  Let’s keep this conversation going for sure.

I have not been thrown a literary curve-ball for quite awhile.  This book broke the streak.  I bought Warner’s book because I enjoyed one of her previous books, Perfect Madness, Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety.  Plus the title of this new book led me to believe I was going to gather more fuel for my “we are drugging our kids too much” fire.  As it happens, when Warner set out to write the book she too was on the “we are drugging our kids too much” side of the fence.  The book was originally entitled UNTITLED:on affluent parents and neurotic kids.  Then she changed her mind.  During her research for the book she claims to have discovered that the data and research available did NOT in actuality support some of her positions.  So she set out to write a different book. Hence the curveball. 

In the preface Warner states that while doing her research a couple truths emerged:

1.     The suffering of children with mental health issues is very real. She says there are millions of children in the USA who are suffering from mental health disorders. (SIDEBAR:  I’d like aspecific source)

2.     Almost no parent takes the issue of psychiatric diagnosis lightly or rushes to “drug” his or her child; and, she continues, responsible child psychiatrists don’t either.

Warner states that by acknowledging these “truths” it doesn’t mean that she believes in (or supports) everything being done by child psychiatrists.  She does acknowledge the sometimes criminally irresponsible role of Big Pharma.  And she admits that there are many toxic aspects of our current contemporary family life that should raise alarms.  To her credit she addresses all of these issues in the book. 

Warner says that we must view the social climate of the family and the irresponsible marketing practices of Big Pharma separately from the lives of children and parents suffering from mental health issues. (Sidebar:  this was my biggest take-away from the book).

Through this book she wanted to “set the record straight” about what life is really like for families with serious mental health issues.  

I get that some kids need assistance, chemical or otherwise.  I get that many children, due to many reasons, are deprived of the services they so desperately require; what I don’t often see addressed (and I'm not implying that Warner should've, it just brought up a bigger question for me) is how and why “issues” of bi-polar children, depressed toddlers and overanxious tweens still appear to be an American problem.  My honest question is how can a supposed rampant epidemic of “research supported” psychological issues be contained within our borders?  (FROM ME: perhaps because we don't let them play??) She does agree that certain issues related to children and medicating them have been influenced by the power of Big Pharma, and does acknowledge that certain medical practitioners have been influenced by the same.

Warner not only attempts to tackle (head-on) the supposed “myth” that we are medicating our kids too much, but sets out to make a case for the complete opposite. 

She says the research supports the claim that parents DON’T jump to medicate kids, that actually more kids need meds than are being served by them, and although yes, some kids do fall into the hands of doctors who do nothing but write scripts, there are (she claims) thousands of children who’d probably benefit from a pharmacological cocktail who never even get a diagnosis and consequently go through life deprived of the interventions which may have assisted (whether those interventions be therapeutic, medical, or pharmacological in nature).

Duly noted and point taken.  Her notes and bibliography seem solid, but I also know we can find “research” that pretty much proves anything.  Forgive my skepticism. That being said, I’d be ignorant to not consider the other side of the coin when such information is presented. 

It’s difficult to not at least examine the point-counter-point made in Warner’s book.  It’s hard to admit that we might have been wrong, or at least misled (again) by the media into thinking that we have such a problem in our midst.  It can feel embarrassing to realize we might have been one of the sheep blindly following an absent shepherd that we have accused others being.

I have struggled with my reaction to the book.  Am I just upset because she didn’t support my views.  Am I upset that maybe the book has (possibly) blown one of my positions out of the water?  If there is so much “evidence” saying that we don’t have a “we are drugging our kids” problem what does that say about the “evidence” presented in the books that say we do? 

Warner said she heard a lot of people saying, “All the kids are on meds.”  So she started asking, “Who?”   She said she hears that, “All the kids are on meds.”   “Except,” she says, “they’re not.”

She heard, “Parents are pushing to get kids on meds.”  “Except,” she says, “they’re not.” 

She hears, “Doctors are diagnosing willy-nilly and prescribing corresponding meds.”  “Except,” she says, “they’re not.”

Towards the end of the book Warner states, “I know that crying out against ‘drugging’ and pathologizing children may seem very humanistic… the truly humane response to sickness, to suffering, to distress, is to try to do something to make it go away.”

Maybe the hardest part of all this for me is wondering how in the hell our kids got so damn sick. And what the hell is causing so much distress in the first place.

=================

Lisa Murphy, June 26, 2013

Edited for clarity and reposted February 2014