PRESS ARTICLES

"Medicating Young Minds"

Source: Time – December 8, 2003

Summary: Drugs have become increasingly popular for treating kids with mood and behavior problems. But how will that affect them in the long run?

ARTICLE

Asian Kids are impervious to the dangers of these drugs – But that’s not true. School performance – often the first thing to be affected in a child with mental illness – is an obsession with middle class Asian parents, and a whole lot of kids are hauled of to unqualified physicians who can dispense a pharmacopoeia of a potentially dangerous drug. Varkha Chulani, Bombay based child psychologist, saw a seven year old boy with ADHD last year who had suffered problems at school. His parents had brought him to a doctor who prescribed a slew of medications, including Valium and Alprax. “The child was on so many drugs, he had become a Zombie,” she says. In South Korea, school-obsessed teens self medicate on powerful over the counter drugs…