Medicating our Youth

I got a suprise skype call from my former tutee last night. I tutored her my first semester in grad school and unfortunately had to stop due to my class schedule. She has ADHD and like most children who are diagnosed, she often lost focus in the classroom and when completing homework. I often found it difficult to keep her on track and not rush to finish an assignment but actually think about how she was solving a problem. She happily reported to me last night though that she is on a new medication that is much better for her and how she is much more organized (she showed me her super clean closet to prove it LOL) and is doing much better in school. I am so proud of the progress she has made but it also made me think about the issue of medicating our youth.

As a future school psychologist, I know this is undoubtly an issue that will come up on a regular basis. According to a recent article I read, "Between the years 1994 and 2001, there was a 191.7% increase in number of office visits resulting in a psychotropic medication prescription among children and adolescents" (Thomas, Conrad, Casler, & Goodman, 2006). One of the things that struck me the most about this article and that I appreciated was the call for School Psychologists to be informed about commonly prescribed medications. Since we often serve as the advocates for students, we should have a solid knowledge base to better inform administrators, teachers and parents. Personally, I would like to see some type of course or training offered in School Psychology programs, even at the Master's and Specialist level, so that we are more familiar with these issues when we work in the schools.

I honestly would not like to have the responsibility of prescribing medication to children because there are so many side effects and adverse reactions that can arise. There are many psychologists (in general) though who are working to make this option available for licensed psychologists. What are your thoughts though? How do you feel about the increasing prevalence of presciptions being issued to children? What can we as School Psychologists do to be more informed in this process? Would you like to be able to prescribe medications in your practice? Go on, comment :)


You can access the article I mentioned by Jeffrey D. Shahidullah by clicking here: http://www.nasponline.org/publications/cq/40/8/off-label.aspx NASP membership is required to access it.