Mostly, people ask themselves what would change bring in the field of drugs for minors. Diligent focus on country’s healthcare is a changing agenda in every state, and that is the reason people have to ask why not the medical area that forms children? New regulations could be the way to keep innovations and other ideas alive. Practitioners should be well informed about the healthcare of minors, which starts with a sound mind and ability to make their decisions in future.
Thesis
Due to how researchers indicate a relation between mental health drugs and the expected complications among minors, then it becomes essential to regulate the psychotropic medication prescription. Should the change be made for controlling practitioners on mental health issues for children? Well, the question may sound simple but it may elude to the need for change. The subject must be very crucial to many healthcare providers and families, and that is why the paper explores the necessity of making regulations for minors in the field of mental health drugs. The article shall use documents written by others regarding this issue to reflect its validity. Changes in rules with new laws and ideas would help to make a better society, and thus, understanding regulations would bring us to the inclination that evolution is natural. Some of the challenges with this issue include:
Lack of complete data.
The U.S. bases its Pediatric mental health care on studies of effects on adults. The drugs for minors seems incomplete due to lack of necessary data over the years. Also, the regular medication has a minimal history concerning adverse effects. Treatment of children especially, the neonate condition is based on anecdote, case reports or clinical experiences. The attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) emergency and the anxiety disorder has encouraged more use of psychotropic drugs although it does not serve the individual needs of children (Ninan et al. 2014). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mental illness drugs in 1990 to treat adults with severe mental issues such as bipolar disorder and depression. Today, the drug gets administered to kids of up to four years with hyperactivity disorder and behavioral problems. Ritalin is the most common medication, but its use not approved to children of such age by the FDA. The drug enforcement administration also classifies the drug as a narcotic similar to cocaine, amphetamines, and morphine (Proctor et al. 2009). Aripiprazole is the only drug approved for children, but only for teenagers aged fifteen to seventeen years with schizophrenia. Children are being administered with Ritalin because neither of them can pay attention nor listen or maybe because they are too active; behaviors are gets treated like a disease.
Drug safety to minors
Sometimes, it is absurd that drugs indicated as unsafe can still be in the market for long without actions taken to eradicate it. For instance, a seductive-hypnotic, propofol which came into the market in 1989, was used for anesthesia induction. The trial data indicated that it had nine percent mortality rate, especially in critically ill patients as compared to four percent of standard sedative. Since then, the use of propofol in pediatric intensive care became connected with infusion syndrome, which induces hypertension and metabolism and produces propofol metabolite that induces toxicity or even disposes patients to sepsis (Number of Children and Adolescents Taking Psychiatric Drugs in the U.S., 2014). In 2003, FDA sent a warning letter to doctors on the issues of adverse events from MedWatch. The experience indicates that the initial dosage and administration rate was not appropriate for neonates.
Another example, hepatotoxicity, recognized in adults was used to minors, meaning that long unexamined safety experience could occur before an absolute risk would show up. After being used for 21 years in the treatment of hyperactivity disorder, it became associated with liver toxicity such as youth fatalities. Also, there was an issuance of a black box warning, and a requirement of weekly monitoring of liver to patients treated with pemoline in 1999. Little effort was recorded to indicate that pemoline prescribers followed those directives. The drug got withdrawn in 2005, six years after its withdrawal from Canada.
Side effects of pills
Pemoline may not be on the first line in treating a child with hyperactivity, but when used, it has an adverse side effect against the liver. Ritalin being a stimulant is likely to cause addiction especially to the young people, noting that physicians offer most of these drugs according to clinical experience instead of the available adequate data since few of them has been subjected to study in determining their efficacy (Singh and Chang, 2012). Everything seems unclear as to why most of these issues become treated through pills as if they are diseases instead of behavioral challenges. Human therapy has been in use for long but yet its usage is minimal to children; they have been given to pills. The history of this treatment in the U.S can start in the 1960s when its effectiveness and value was questioned. Later, behavior therapy gained influenced although they late became relegated to the remedies of behaviors in disordered kids. In the 1970s, the process reached gradual expansion up to higher functioning clients by integrating the cognitive processes and focusing on emotions.
Summary/conclusion
The pediatric healthcare for kids lacks adequate information, and physicians conduct medication through the knowledge of adult mental issues. Thorough research is the only method of providing credible results to help the minors. The drugs administered to children are not proven by FDA although some of them get applied to those aged four years, and eventually, the question of children’s safety arises. The only tested drug by the Food and Drug Administration is Aripiprazole. All medications used in treatment in this field have adverse side effects, and thus it would be better if physician adopts another option such as therapy to the minors.
References
Ninan, A., Stewart, S., Theall, L., Katuwapitiya, S., " Kam, C. (2014). Adverse Effects of Psychotropic Medications in Children: Predictive Factors. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 23(3), 218-225. Retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4197522/
Number of Children " Adolescents Taking Psychiatric Drugs in the U.S. (2014). Retrieved from www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/
Proctor, E. K., Landsverk, J., Aarons, G., Chambers, D., Glisson, C., " Mittman, B. (2009). Implementation research in mental health services: an emerging science with conceptual, methodological, and training challenges. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 36(1), 24-34.
Singh, M., " Chang, K. (2012). The Neural Effects of Psychotropic Medications in Children and Adolescents. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 21(4), 753-771. Retrieved from dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2012.07.010
