Prozac for children

[STEED]

European drug watchdog backs Prozac for children

LONDON (Reuters) - Europe's medicine watchdog said on Tuesday that Prozac could be used to treat children aged eight years and over.
Despite controversy over giving antidepressants to adolescents, the European Medicines Agency said the benefits outweighed the risks in children with moderate to severe depression who failed to respond to psychological therapy.
Prozac, or fluoxetine, was originally developed by Eli Lilly and Co but is now widely available in generic versions since Lilly's patent has expired.



© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...OPE-PROZAC.xml

How bloody stupid can this be, that’s it get the kids hooked on legal drugs before they give illegal drugs a spin.

[Skybird]

Illustrates how industrial interests tend to form the dogma on which communal and political acting and thinking is basing on. And Prozac is a product that really has two faces. Don't want to demonize psychic drugs in general, sometimes they can be a relief or the precondtion before non-chemical therpautical measures even could be started and realized by the patient. but Prozac to children - A step towards designer-children.

[bradclark1]

From what I remember in the news Prozac + Children are a bad combination. High suicide rates if I remember correct. I wonder how many death's they figure on are worth the risks?

[kiwi_2005]

Prozac for kids! Hmm i was on prozac for 5wks one time there and i must say i spent alot of time staring at the monitor, eating alot and staying up all hours of the night. But i got no bad drawbacks or bad thoughts from it, in fact the prozac worked all i needed was a chemical kick in the brain ( more like wake my brain up lol). Prozac does work, in fact i call it the "silent running" drug, because you dont notice a thing, yet its in your system working for you. I have heard alot of horror stories about prozac but luckierly i never experienced them. There is no dependency, i never went into a cold turkey when i went off them.

In fact coffee is a worse drug than prozac. I go nuts when i haven't had my daily coffee intake

Prozac for adults yes, for children no.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by kiwi_2005

Prozac for kids! Hmm i was on prozac for 5wks one time there and i must say i spent alot of time staring at the monitor, eating alot and staying up all hours of the night. But i got no bad drawbacks or bad thoughts from it, in fact the prozac worked all i needed was a chemical kick in the brain ( more like wake my brain up lol). Prozac does work, in fact i call it the "silent running" drug, because you dont notice a thing, yet its in your system working for you. I have heard alot of horror stories about prozac but luckierly i never experienced them. There is no dependency, i never went into a cold turkey when i went off them.

In fact coffee is a worse drug than prozac. I go nuts when i haven't had my daily coffee intake

Prozac for adults yes, for children no.

Nice that it worked for you. Noone denies that it could work- with some people. with others it does not, and could cause severe harm. It is like with any other highly potent medical drug: you should not use it inflationary, but only in situations (diagnosis-wise) that are strictly defined, and then only with caution and under observation. It is no drug you want to see becoming a new kind of Aspirin. It also is relatively cheap, compared to some other medications of that kind with lower risks of side-effects. This is what raises my suspicion. I think they try to turn it into a "Volksdroge" like Aspirin, Valium, and the like. Lower price, but high profits due to high sales numbers.

[Yahoshua]

This is the reason why I'm liking a combinatio of Eastern/Western medicine better.

Western medicine has it's greatest flaw in the fact that the focus is to eliminate the symptoms of sickness (which is literally the Western definition of health, is the absence of symptoms of sickness). So Western medicine never actually cures anything, but practically gives you a bandaid and covinves you that you're ok. This leads to an overdependence on drugs, and eventually the body resists those drugs and new ones have to be developed. The cycle continues.

Eastern Medicine on the other hand, defines health as the absence of sickness. If you're not sick, you don't show symptoms, and the sickness doessn't continue to recur. Eastern medicine addresses the core of the problem and not the results of it. A great deal of Eastern medicine is the focus on preventing sickness. Which, by and far, is always going to be cheaper than the cure.

However, Western medicine has advanced surgical procedure to resolve complicated health problems, whereas Eastern medicine does not depend on this radical recourse as much. Yet Western medicine has (generally) failed to assist the general population in both preventing, curing, and assisting recovery of the patient. This is where Eastern medicine rules the playing field.

Unfortunately I'm running out of time to write this post so if I can I'll write a follow-up later.

[August]

Originally Posted by Yahoshua

Western medicine has it's greatest flaw in the fact that the focus is to eliminate the symptoms of sickness (which is literally the Western definition of health, is the absence of symptoms of sickness). So Western medicine never actually cures anything, but practically gives you a bandaid and covinves you that you're ok. This leads to an overdependence on drugs, and eventually the body resists those drugs and new ones have to be developed. The cycle continues.

That's because the big money isn't in the cure, it's in the treatment.

[caspofungin]

Originally Posted by Yahoshua

Western medicine never actually cures anything

depends on your definition of cure. if you mean eradicate the disease, try appendicitis, cholecystitis, early colon cancer, early breast cancer, early testicular cancer, various thyroid cancers, lymphoma, leukaemia...

if you mean keep you alive 'til your body eradicates the disease -- meningitis, cholera, various dysenteries, gastroenteritis, adult chicken pox, measles...

all of which have significant mortality rates in areas which don't have ready access to "Western" medicine. Not saying it's better than other treatments, but it does work for plenty of conditions.

[Konovalov]

Originally Posted by caspofungin

depends on your definition of cure. if you mean eradicate the disease, try appendicitis, cholecystitis, early colon cancer, early breast cancer, early testicular cancer, various thyroid cancers, lymphoma, leukaemia...

if you mean keep you alive 'til your body eradicates the disease -- meningitis, cholera, various dysenteries, gastroenteritis, adult chicken pox, measles...

all of which have significant mortality rates in areas which don't have ready access to "Western" medicine. Not saying it's better than other treatments, but it does work for plenty of conditions.

That sounds like talk from someone who practices medicine to me or at bare minimum who works in that health/medical industry.

[caspofungin]

nothing like a little over-defensiveness to give the game away...

[DeepSix]

Part of depression is a lack of motivation. The risk with a "low-power" anti-depressant drug (Prozac, Zoloft, etc.) is that as it raises the patient's motivation, they find they have enough of it to consider suicide (among other things). That doesn't mean the drug is inherently bad; the problem is putting a child (or anybody, for that matter) on something without carefully monitoring it. The right dosage has to be achieved and it has to be taken on a fairly regular schedule. Anti-depressants can't be taken like aspirin. Lastly, the drug can't do it all; it's just there to assist the patient in doing what they have to do.

[STEED]

Prozac screws up the brains chemistry and to give a drug like that to a child, you are asking for trouble.

[DeepSix]

"Alters" brain chemistry, not "screws up." Again, that's why I say monitoring is important. You can't "fire and forget" with anti-depressants.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by DeepSix

"Alters" brain chemistry, not "screws up." Again, that's why I say monitoring is important. You can't "fire and forget" with anti-depressants.

I have witness the results of these drugs from two friends I used to have both of them took stronger and stronger drugs. Both committed suicide

[DeepSix]

Originally Posted by STEED

I have witness the results of these drugs from two friends I used to have both of them took stronger and stronger drugs. Both committed suicide

I am sorry.