American Children Are Over-Medicated

While the empirical evidence for this contention is slim, the biological model of mental illness has been widely accepted in both the medical and educational communities, and it has serious repercussions for how we deal with antisocial behavior in children.  Once it is assumed that the causes of all mental disorders must be physiological, it naturally follows that the prescribed cures should be physiological as well.  Accordingly, Dr. Koplewicz champions drug therapy for children with behavior problems, seeking to fix their supposed brain abnormalities through psychiatric medications.  He dismisses worries that doctors might overmedicate children.  “I actually think we’re not medicating kids enough,” he told one interviewer.

Peter Breggin views Koplewicz’s comments at the White House conference as a prime example of what is wrong with the biological model of psychiatry.  Insisting on reducing every thought and behavior to its material basis, the biological model goes against both common sense and empirical research.  Referring to Koplewicz’s claim that absentee parents and childhood trauma (presumably including physical and sexual abuse) play no role in causing mental disorders, Breggin says he was “shocked that anyone in the mental health field would dare deny the mountain of clinical and research evidence that confirms the devastating effect of broken relationships and traumatic events on the lives of children.”

Yet Koplewicz is not a fringe figure, as his prominent role at the White House conference attests.  Nor is he alone in thinking that Americans do not medicate their antisocial children enough.  During the past decade [1997-2007], the number of children receiving psychiatric medications in the Untied States has skyrocketed.


John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.98