Antipsychotic Drugs: Never Justified in Children for Any Reason

by Heidi Stevenson

10 March 2010

Antipsychotic drugs cause brain damage. When used over several years, it's almost a sure thing. There is no justification for ever giving these disabling chemicals to any child under any circumstances. Yet, that's exactly what happens every day, and it's done to children for diagnoses of ADHD, mental retardation, and simple misbehavior.

Tardive Dyskinesia

Dyskinesia is involuntary repetitive movement. An afflicted person suffers from brain damage. It can include small movements like eye tics or involve the entire body. Tardive dyskinesia refers to such abnormal movement when it's drug-induced. Peter R. Breggin, MD, has dedicated his life and psychiatric practice to ending the use of psychiatric drugs. In The Antidepressant Fact Book, he describes it like this:

Tardive dyskinesia is one of the most devastating of all drug-induced disorders. The abnormal movements or spasms can strike any of the muscles that are under voluntary control, including muscles of the face, eyes, mouth, tongue, neck, shoulders, arms, legs, hands, and feet. Breathing, speaking, and swallowing can also be impaired. One variant, called tardive dystonia, causes painful spasms, often in the neck and shoulders. Another, called tardive akathisia, involves excruciating agitation that compels the individual to move about. Both variants can produce lifelong physical and mental torture.⁽¹⁾

The likelihood of developing tardive dyskinesia varies with different psycholeptics, but all carry the risk—and it is cumulative. The longer it's taken, the likelier the sufferer will become afflicted. Breggin states that in some of the older drugs, including Thorazine, Navine, Mellaril, Prolixin, and Haldol, the risk is 5-8% per year of exposure. So, five years of exposure results in a risk of 25-40% that the individual will develop it.

In the elderly, it's far worse. The risk is 20% (sometimes more) per year. In five years, nearly all elderly people can be expected to develop tardive dyskinesia—and the primary reason for giving these drugs to the elderly is to dull them into submission in nursing homes.

Newer antipsychotic drugs, like Zyprexa, Seroquel, Risperdal, and Abilify, also carry the risk of tardive dyskinesia. Though they claim to carry a lower risk, Dr. Breggin has diagnosed tardive dyskinesia in dozens of drugged children.

With the risk of tardive dyskinesia alone, how can anyone support prescribing these drugs to children under any condtions? That, though, is precisely what's happening—and it's being done to children as young as 18 months, with spurious diagnoses like bipolar disorder. Dr. Breggin's website refers to this as follows:

...psychiatrists advocating on behalf of drug companies recently began to diagnose thousands of children with bipolar disorder. The purpose? To justify giving more "mood stabilizer" and "antipsychotic" drugs to children. The FDA has cooperated by approving Risperdal for some diagnostic categories in childhood.

Could there be any worse sort of child abuse?

Brain Damage

Tardive dyskinesia is a symptom of a brain permanently damaged. It is, in fact, how antipsychotics operate. The claim that they zero in on the specific mental problem by fixing brain chemistry is absolutely untrue. If that were the case, then they'd do nothing in people without mental troubles. However, they do precisely the same thing in all brains—no exceptions.

Dr. Breggin became involved in psychiatric reform in 1972 when he headed an international campaign to stop the reintroduction of lobotomy. That procedure destroys brain tissue; it is, in fact, the purpose. Breggin has taken on some of the most famous proponents of psychosurgery and psychiatric drugging, who are often from his alma mater, Harvard. His campaigning expanded to advocating for the abolishment of shock treatment—another disabling brain-destroying process that is now making a comeback.

Ultimately, Breggin took on all psychiatric drugs. In describing their action, he likens their effects as equivalent, sometimes even identical, to lobotomies. They attack and destroy the same area of the brain.

Children's brains are permanently damaged with psychiatric drugs. The most obvious are antipsychotics, such as Zyprexa and Seroquel. However, some of the same things happen with other classes of drugs, including SSRI and SNRI antidepressants. These drugs are being given to our most at-risk children, those who have been defined as having autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, and a host of other diagnoses, including ones that simply mean the children are difficult to handle.

Giving a child any psychiatric drug will, at the very least, destroy that child's full potential. Antipsychotics are the worst of the lot. Yet, psychiatrists base their practices on "treating" children with these poisons. A five or ten minute appointment will result in a diagnosis and prescription. The parents are expected to do as they're told and drug their children. GPs and PCPs (primary care physicians) prescribe these poisons to children. Schools give them out.

There is only one rational response to any doctor who would try to drug your child with an antipsychotic. Quickly, grab your child, stand up, face the doctor, and say, "No!" Then, walk out and do not return.

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