My wife and I watched a great PBS Frontline documentary which originally aired in January of this year, called "The Medicated Child". This is a very good but also very scary documentary because it brings to light how many children in the U.S. are now being diangosed with bipolar disorder (a controversial diagnosis for children) and are prescribed–many as early as 4 years old–anti-psychotic & anti-anxiety drugs, some of which are kiddy substitutes for lithium.
Think about this–children are growing up in the U.S. heavily medicated with mood-altering, even consciousness-altering drugs, not knowing what unaltered consciousness is like. One boy who is a focus of the documentary, started on 4 of these heavy drugs when he was 4, and is still on them at 16.
My two beefs with the documentary were: a) how little focus it gave to the pharmaceutical industry’s push to have more children prescribed with heavy drugs formerly used only on adults (there is documentary evidence showing that when, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, big pharma decided to expand its markets for drugs to juveniles, there was a huge increase in the diagnosis of ADD, ADHD, and ultimately manic depression and bipolar disorder, and it should have been covered here); b) how rates of manic depression and bipolar disorder among juveniles compare with those of children in foreign countries.
If you get a chance, try to watch this documentary online at the following link–The Medicated Child (PBS Frontline). I think you’ll find it, as I did, interesting, scary and depressing all at the same time.