Children and Mental Health

It is a topic we so rarely talk about; mental health and children. In all reality, who wants to look it? Not the children and parents, why they seems to think that it is their fault a society blames them so not the parents, so who looks at it? Yet children being diagnosed with psychiatric conditions at an alarming rate and rarely do we want to look at that fact little long talk about it.

There are many issues children need to deal with growing up. In today’s world we have a divorce rate of over 50%, our unemployment is astounding, people are losing their homes, parents are worried, teachers are distracted, and young children feel this. How could they not? To top that off, school bullying has increased and so has cyber bullying, and kids are getting it from every direction.

Is being bullied or worried about your family a Prozac deficiency or is it a natural response? Do the trying threes really require an antidepressant? Some doctors and pharmaceutical companies would say yes. In fact, the number of school children prescribed anti-depressants and mind-altering drugs has more than quadrupled in the last decade. New figures show general practitioners are prescribing pills in record numbers to combat stress, violent behavior and even tiredness.

Child drugging has been a huge profitable market with earnings of about $4.8 billion dollars a year. Pharmaceutical companies have done everything in their power to convince the press, legislators and especially parents why children need to be put on drugs.

There are 20 million children in the United States who have been diagnosed with some kind of psychiatric disorder and drugged for it. It has become an epidemic. Innocent children are being turned into patients for simply acting like kids. As we know, there have been a number of serious and deadly results from young people taking medications for depression. Many if not all the recent school shootings have shown us a picture of a disturbed young person who is on some type of antidepressant. But that is not is as disturbing as three and four-year olds on antidepressants.

Let’s look at ADHD and children. At this very moment at least 6,000,000 U.S. school children are being administered Ritalin or other addictive, mind-altering, psychiatric drugs. A pediatric psychologist became concerned when she was suddenly inundated with ADHD referrals. She worried that the disorder was being over diagnosed and began a study of 30,000 grade school students in two school districts in Virginia. The study raises many questions about ADHD diagnosis but provides few answers. Were previous estimates too low Is ADHD being over diagnosed, or are doctors now doing a better job of diagnosing it.

In the U.S. and many of those are being prescribed medication because the parent, daycare worker or school teacher feels that the child might be ADHD.

Did I say that right? A person working in day care who has no medical or psychology background are telling parents their child has ADHD? That is about as scary as it gets! It is almost as scary as parents are not being informed about all the potential risks to their child when they agree to a psychiatric drug prescription.

According to testimony given in the fall of 2004 to the Congressional Energy and Commerce Committee insignificant results were found in two thirds of the studies in which children were given anti-depressants and compared to children given a placebo.

About 1.5 million children ages 5 on up take Ritalin for relief from attention and hyperactivity disorders, researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics. The drug’s popularity is growing. Ritalin use is up 250% since 1990, according to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

How do we help? Did you know that the vast majority of medical doctors consider ADHD to be of unknown causes? What we do know is that the elimination of food additives and refined sugar produces dramatic improvements not just for children with ADHD but for children who show signs of depression.

One thing I have noticed when I work with children with ADHD or depression and anxiety is their diet. I ask the parents to keep a food diary for their kids for two weeks. Some parents are honest some are not.

After reading all the food diaries I began to look at how we send our children to school. Let’s say we give them a nice bowl of Frosted Mini Wheat’s which have 10 sugars and a whopping 41 grams of cards which turns to sugar. Now add milk, non-fat or low fat milk is pact with sugar on the average 12-15 grams. Now let me tell you that 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar equals 4 grams of sugar. Now 3.75 grams of carbs equal 1 gram of sugar. So a small bowl of frosted mini Wheats with a cup of milk equals about 14 teaspoon of sugar.

Feeding our children fresh fruits and a good protein source offers good brain health. Carbohydrate loaded breakfasts of frozen waffles, pancakes, pastry rolls and cold cereal do nothing to feed the brain. Instead, eat an omelet with low-fat cheese and a lean meat to activate neurotransmitters in the brain. If you are in a time crunch, have them drink a protein shake for breakfast.

Foods That Are Good For You

• Vegetables (except corn, potatoes and squash).

• Beans and peas

• Fruit

• Nuts and seeds

• Fish oils, Flaxseed oil, Olive oil, Primrose oil

• Leans meats

• Eggs

• Low-fat cheeses

• Protein powder

Foods To Avoid or Decrease

• Breads and pasta from processed white flour

• White rice white potatoes

• Desserts, ice cream, candy, chocolate, cookies, doughnuts

• Powdered or refined sugar

• Soda, sports drinks, tea, coffee and alcohol

• Fast foods, burgers, pizza, hotdogs, milkshakes

• Processed foods-Hotdogs, lunchmeat

• Junk food, chips, soda

• Fruit juices

• Artificial colors flavors and preservatives

• Artificial sweeteners (aspartame, saccharin, sucralose).

Folate is one of the B vitamins and helps aid in depression. Foods high in folates include: orange juice, strawberries, citrus fruits and juices, leafy green vegetables, whole grain breads, and pinto, navy and kidney beans. Foods rich in protein are rich in an amino acid called tyrosine. Tyrosine may help boost levels of the brain chemicals dopamine and norepinephrine, which can help treat depression as well as ADHD. Foods include turkey, tuna, salmon or chicken beans and peas, lean beef, low-fat cheese, almonds, milk, poultry, soy products, yogurt.