In 2001 Frontline reported on the dramatic rise in the number of children being given behaviour modifying medications. Frontline: The Medicated Child, PBS 2008
A teacher suggested he was hyperactive ... In pre-school another teacher suggested medication ... and prescribed Ritalin … It made him anxious. ibid.
A steep rise in the diagnosis and treatment of childhood mental illnesses of all kinds. ibid.
Tens of thousands of children are being prescribed powerful medication to control hyperactivity and improve their behaviour. According to the latest figures prescriptions for these drugs have almost doubled in the last five years. But now Britain’s leading psychological societies are calling for an urgent review. So is medication being used as a chemical cosh for kids? Tonight: Chemical Cosh for Kids? ITV 2011
The number of prescriptions for drugs to combat ADHD has gone up from 480,000 to 800,000 in the last 5 years. Most of the drugs are stimulants, and work like the illegal drugs speed or cocaine. But for ADHD sufferers they radically increase focus and help concentration in the classroom. ibid.
The medication has side-effects. And some of them are serious. ibid.
Bigger and bigger doses are required to achieve the same effect. ibid.
Families in crisis. Parents desperate to get help for their loved ones. What can we all do to help? And why talking matters. Tonight: Can Britain Get Talking? ITV 2023
There’s something we need to make sure doesn’t get neglected. And that’s our own and our children’s mental health. ibid.
Diagnoses of mental disorders in children and adolescents are increasing at an alarming rate, particularly in the USA where the number of manic depressive children has gone up by 4000% over the past ten years. The most widely used treatments are psychotropic drugs. Panorama: Kids on Pills, BBC 2000
In Europe different medical terms are applied to psychiatric irregularities in children ... The bipolar profile fitted a mere 7% of patients. ibid.
ADHD is currently the most frequent mental illness in children. ibid.
Using psychotropic drugs to treat children is a very recent science. ibid.
The tendency to reach out for pills is increasing in Europe too. ibid.
We reveal the shocking rise of nearly 50% in unexpected deaths of mental health patients. And how despite 5 years of government promises funding for mental health NHS trusts has in fact dropped by £150 million. Panorama: Revealed: Britain’s Mental Health Crisis, BBC 2017
Our children are facing a mental health crisis. At least one in ten kids is struggling to cope. Overstretched health services are turning kids away leaving families desperate. Just how sick do our children have to be to get treatment? Panorama: Kids in Crisis, BBC 2018
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, or CAMS, which currently treats around 400,000 children in England alone. ibid.
We investigate the private clinics diagnosing ADHD online. We reveal a health scandal affecting thousands of people. Private clinics handing out powerful drugs and failing to carry out basic checks. Panorama: Private ADHD Clinics Exposed, BBC 2023
The important distinction between symptoms we can all experience and ADHD often gets lost. ibid.
Support groups say ADHD has long been under-diagnosed. ibid.
The prescriptions cost £52 per month, and I’m told I’ll need following up appointments costing £195 a time. ibid.
In fact Van Gogh’s mind was troubled by much more than isolation. He found himself gripped by terrible seizures and hallucinations. Doctors later diagnosed epilepsy. Van Gogh feared insanity ... The illness was becoming a central part of his painting. Great Artists with Tim Marlow: Van Gogh
Not mad exactly but suffering. Vincent was an epileptic and struggled with deepening bouts of depression, made worse no doubt by the relentless bad news from Theo that still nobody wanted to buy his pictures. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Van Gogh, BBC 2006
He is translating mental upheaval into a revolution on the canvas. ibid.
They said it was a panic attack ... They sent me here. Sopranos s1e1 starring James Gandolfini & Lorriane Bracco & Edie Falco & Michael Imperioli & Dominic Chianese & Steven van Zandt & Tony Sirico & Robert Iler et al, Tony to Dr Melfi, HBO 1999
At first it felt like ginger ale in my skull. ibid.
A feeling of pending doom? The Sopranos s1e11: Nobody Knows Anything, Dr Melfi to Tony
We’ve been seeing his therapist together. The Sopranos s3e7: Second Opinion, Carmela to mum and dad at table
Like I’ve got ginger ale on my brain. The Sopranos s3e10: To Save Us All From Satan’s Power, Tony to Dr Melfi
A medicine with which the Federation hopes to eliminate mental illness for all time. Star Trek s3e14: Whom Gods Destroy, Kirk’s log
What does it feel like when a person is losing his mind? Star Trek s7e17: The Next Generation: Masks, Data to Geordi
Data has the android equivalent of multiple personalities. ibid. Troi
He was supposed to be the supreme leader of a master race. A paragon of physical and mental health. To lead Germany to a glorious future. But behind the Fuhrer façade was a fragile pill-popper. Dependent on a dubious daily diet of injections, tablets and tonics. Nazi Underworld: Hitler’s Drug Use Revealed ***** National Geographic 2013
Drug abuse, sex stimulants, and psychological breakdowns. ibid.
A Fuhrer off his face. A hapless hypochondriac, a higher Hitler. ibid.
A possible march to mental deterioration … Hitler himself suffered a fateful breakdown long before he became Fuhrer. ibid.
‘Neurotic bordering on psychotic. Masochistic tendencies. And strong sexual perversions’. ibid. Hitler’s medical file
Hitler was riding high in 1941. ibid.
According to his doctors Goering was suicidal, depressed, egocentric, anti-Semitic and a brutal hysteric with a brutal character. Goering: A Career: Seduction of Power, Military Channel 2012
The mentally ill were vilified and later murdered by law. Hitler’s Henchmen II: Freisler
Every family has secrets ... Two of the Queen’s cousins have been absent from the feast declared dead to family and society. For decades the cousins remained hidden in an institution for so-called mental defectives. Many thousands of others condemned as idiots and imbeciles shared their fate and were hidden out of sight and out of mind. But the Royal secret was exposed. The Queen’s Hidden Cousins, Channel 4 2011
The advice given to parents was to put their deficient children away and to forget about them. ibid.
In 1941, at the ages of 15 and 22, Katherine and Nerissa were consigned to the care of the Royal Earlswood institution. ibid.
They found a further 3 members [Fane sisters] of the [Bowes-Lyon] family had been admitted to the Royal Earlswood on the same day in 1941. ibid.
Buckingham Palace has said that the Queen is aware of reports that two of her cousins have been kept secretly in a mental hospital but added it was a matter for the Bowes-Lyon family. Today the family said that entries in Burke’s Peerage showing the two women had died many years ago were the result of vagueness and not the result of cover-up. BBC News
She [Palin] constantly slips into these catatonic stupors. Game Change 2012 starring Julianne Moore & Woody Harrelson & Ed Harris & Peter MacNicol & Jamey Sheridan & Sarah Paulson & Ron Livingston & Melissa Farman & Kevin Bigley et al, director Jay Roach, adviser
Has it occurred to you guys that she might be mentally unstable? ibid.
She could be on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown. ibid. Schmidt to McCain
Under the new freedom commission mentally unstable people must be medicated on a compulsory basis with lethal and untested but very profitable psychiatric medications. Dr Rima Laibow
The New Freedom Commission is a federal program to mandate the bogus screening and compulsory medication of children from infancy through eighteen years of age in this country through the use of completely inappropriate screening techniques. Any child who deviates from the prescribed feeling and thought pattern that is allowed to have them will be compulsorily medicated, even over the objection of their parents, with dangerous, unproven and untested psychiatric medications to control their thoughts, their behaviours and to impede their emotional development. This is a federally mandated program. Dr Rima Laibow, cited One Nation Under Siege
Big Brother is on the march. A plan to subject all children to mental health screening is underway, and the pharmaceuticals are gearing up for bigger sales of psychotropic drugs. Phyllis Schlafly