Whats next for depressed kids?
Then, “what’ll happen is the advocates and the family will say this is outrageous. You’re telling me my kid can’t get any treatment because you guys are afraid to prescribe it,” said Dr. Ken Duckworth, medical director of the National Alliance of the Mentally Ill. Nobody thinks physicians will resort to using the older generation of depression therapies, including so-called Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors. Those didn’t promote suicide, but they had serious side effects, said Dr. Martin Teicher, chief of the lab of developmental psychopharmacology at McLean Hospital in Belmont. Critics say the newer drugs have been irresponsibly prescribed in the past. Doctors have been known to hand out the drugs to young patients for headaches, insomnia, or infections that led to fatigue, according to Dr. David Healy, a longtime critic of the pharmaceutical companies and psychopharmacology expert. The FDA advisory panel’s announcement will ideally stop doctors from prescribing the drugs in such a cavalie
