Medicating Young Minds: How to Know If Psychiatric Drugs Will Help or Hurt Your Child [Hardcover]

Glen R. Elliott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 9, 2006

"Treating a child with drugs before it's clear what is going on is worse than not treating a child at all. Let's face it: We are experimenting on these kids without tracking the results."-Glen Elliott, M.D., Ph.D.

When you consider that 10 million children under the age of 18, including a growing number of preschoolers, are on anti-depressants and another 7 million are on stimulants for attention problems, it becomes obvious why Dr. Elliott has written this guide for parents who feel "they have no choice." As the nation's leading expert on psychiatric disorders in children and the leading researcher on the effects of psychiatric drugs on kids, Dr. Elliott says that doctors and even teachers are too quick to recommend medicating young minds rather than taking the necessary steps to find out if drugs are even necessary.Medicating Young Minds tells parents what to expect, the questions to ask, the treatment they deserve from a concerned doctor, and even what tests to demand to make sure that drugs are the best recourse. Parents do have a choice, says Dr. Elliott, and this book empowers parents to make their own decisions. With detailed, step-by-step advice, he counsels parents on how to become active and informed participants in the diagnostic and treatment process. The long-term consequences of putting kids on psychiatric drugs are still unknown, and Medicating Young Minds will be of critical interest to all parents, teachers, and doctors concerned with the welfare of children.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Glen R. Elliott , M.D., Ph.D., is director of the Children's Center at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute in San Francisco and a leading expert on behavioral problems in children. He has a doctorate degree in psychopharmacology and has published dozens of studies on psychiatric drugs and adolescents. He is frequently featured in the media as an expert commentator on this issue, including a 2003 cover story in Time magazine, "Are We Giving Kids To Many Drugs?" He lives in San Francisco.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori and Chang; 1 edition (May 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584794895
• ISBN-13: 978-1584794899
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #89,254 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #16 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Family Health

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear, Concise and Scary, November 2, 2006

By 

Jed Reader (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Medicating Young Minds: How to Know If Psychiatric Drugs Will Help or Hurt Your Child (Hardcover)

This is a very well organized and presented summary of current practice in child psychiatry, clearly written for the lay person. It gives guidelines for finding help for you and your child and a clear summary of the four major groups of behavioral and mood disorders. It also discusses the medications used to treat these various types of disorders as well as some alternative, non-drug therapies. I highly recommend this book to parents who are beginning to wonder if their child's problem behavior is more than just simple misbehavior.

Having been on this road for 9 years now, I can see where our family was pushed in directions that were not the best for my child, and I plan to use the information in this book to get my son and his treatments re-assessed. Without a helpful book like this one we were subjected to some of the mistakenly but commonly practiced diagnostic methodology that may not have been the best choice for us. Unfortunately, this book also confirms what I have feared, that my worries over the future of my bipolar/ODD son are indeed justified and his life and mine will never be an easy one.

One word of warning: this book may frighten you because it makes it clear how little we know about the causes of mood and behavioral disorders, as well as how little we know about how and why psychoactive medications do or do not work. Do not let that stop you from using medications if that seems to be the only way to relieve your child's mental and social pain.

Huge progress has been made in psychiatry since the 1960's but an immense amount of work still needs to be done. Fortunately, this book clearly lays out what can be done at this time to help "problem" kids. On the other hand, unfortunately it also shows where research and knowledge are lacking.

I highly recommend this book both for parents who are beginning to wonder if they might be bad parents because their child just can't behave, as well as for families already entangled in the mental health system.

5.0 out of 5 stars Book&DoctorAreGreat, September 19, 2010

By 

Mom in San Jose, CA - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Medicating Young Minds: How to Know If Psychiatric Drugs Will Help or Hurt Your Child (Hardcover)

I read this book while on a waiting list to see this gentlemen. His book is very readable and informative. Now that we know him, I can say it reads like he talks. Straight forward without fluff. He's a great M.D., Ph.D. and this book is really worth reading if you want to understand the various medications and how they relate to various diagnoses.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book, But Also Consider Natural Remedies, January 2, 2007

By 

Kenneth J. Dillon (Washington, D.C. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Medicating Young Minds: How to Know If Psychiatric Drugs Will Help or Hurt Your Child (Hardcover)

The key to reading this book is to understand that the author is really trying to convey to you everything you need to know about making wiser decisions regarding possible medication for your troubled child. He is not interested in investigating natural remedies or in discussing in depth the environmental and societal dimensions of the problems these kids have--just in explaining the medications and other accepted therapeutic approaches. He and his co-writer do a fine job of spelling out in very clear prose, with helpful case studies, all the angles you need to consider. Dr. Elliott firmly believes in the value of administering drugs to many of these kids, but he is quick to note when it is inappropriate.
Of course, the natural remedies are in fact important to examine. For instance, the newer clinical trial literature contains studies where certain herbal remedies perform as well as Ritalin and Prozac without the same level of side effects. And other natural remedies besides herbal ones deserve investigation. (My research suggests that correctly combining different types of natural remedies may well lead to outperforming Ritalin and Prozac.) Persuasive studies of environmental and societal influences causing or exacerbating these kids' syndromes also are worth reading. But that's all for another book. Dr. Elliott's does what it sets out to do very nicely.