Responses to two

Hidden truths : the policy of brain, mind and soul in Australian psychology

In this article it discusses the effects of ADHD on children and the secrets behind the increase in rise of diagnoses of ADHD children. The article basically says that a school that has a child diagnosed with ADHD receives a portion of money from the government. Obviously looking at this from an American point of view it makes me think of what if that probably happens here. Or if say doctors or drug companies get kick backs or bonuses for prescribing the drugs. This article is about Australian life. The author then goes on to discuss this psychological revisionism.

This revisionism seems like it kind of falls under a eugenics type of movement, but I did not understand the whole thing. This article was only published about one year ago in 2005 and he said that he was surprised at how ignorant Americans seemed to be about ADHD. Again though I believe it goes back to many ethical issues that you must concern yourself with. Because as I have said before. Boys with be Boys so to speak but you just have to wonder if it’s a case of children just simply being children.

I think that this article presents a very clear point, however it seems to be a bias one. It seems like the author is trying to get everyone on his side and its not really written like a regular psychological paper is usually.


AEDs and psychotropic drugs in children with autism and epilepsy

After learning a lot about autism and aspergers syndrome I have been really starting to find these types of articles interesting. In this article the author is starting to suggest that the use of SSRI’s maybe used in the treatment of autism in order to relieve some of the repetitiveness. I was also unaware of the risk of epilepsy as a result of having autism. I really liked this article because it discusses some of the structures that were affected by this disease such as the amygdala and hippocampus.

The article also discusses some of the AEDs used to treat the autism and seizures. Such as vaporic acid which seemed to have an alright effect but the a lot of the data on these drugs is very inconclusive. What I mean by this is that there haven’t really been a lot of case studies or long term studies done to find out the effects. According to Prof Lekowitz Autism was pretty much an unknown disorder until Keene State started doing a lot of research on it. So obviously a lot of studies are still waiting to be done and I would expect someone could make a name for themselves if they found some things that helped out autistic children.

Responses to three articles

In the first article psychopharmacology for the Clinician it discusses medication used to treat Alzheimer’s disease. This study was a randomized placebo 6 month study. It looked to see the loss of benefit of medication on a patient suffering from this disease. The study shows that after one week after stopping of the drug there would be considerable signs that the drug had stopped working. It was also used to treat dementias as well. The study also looked at switching different type of drugs to see the effects they would have on the people. It showed that there was a significant reaction when drugs were discontinued and replaced with others.

The Second article I read was Pediatric psychopharmacology: a review of new developments and recent research. I found this article to be very interesting and I am interested in pursing this for my research paper. The article discusses many different types of drugs for treating children who suffer from, depression, behavioral disorders and some psychotic disorders. It was very interesting to read about all the medication and how some of the medications have just a placebo type of effect whereas other medications help. Such as the SSRI’s used to treat depression. Obviously this is a fairly new field of study so the article discusses the many draw backs about proving efficacy.

I also found it interesting that a pediatrician is not really advised to prescribe drugs without consulting a psychologist. The article describes a battery of tests that a physician should administer while trying to prescribe drugs to young children. The article also raises several issues concerning if children should be treated with these drugs or if they are more designed for adults. There was also mention of parents not really wanting to medicate their children so young or the issue of a teacher saying they should be medicated and the parents not really wanting to medicate their child.

The last article I read was a review of pharmocokinetics and I did not really understand this study. I understood that they were trying to test out some type of dopamine receptor druge and they used subjects that were considered “normal” or “healthy” and they used subjects who were in need of this drug. They also used double blinds and stroop tests in order to test cognition. But as far as what they were trying to prove I could not understand all the medical jargon so I am going to ask questions about it while I meet with you. Maybe you could help shed some light on the situation. I also had difficulty trying to read all the graphs and tables that they were trying to prove their results. One of the things I did comprehend was that it seemed that lower doses of the drug were ok, but when higher doses of the drug were administered it affected memory loss and they almost had a sedative type of effect. But that was pretty much I got out of that last article.