Don't Smack Them, Drug Them

Britain leads the world in radical, new and socially acceptable forms of child abuse.

The UK has seen the fastest rise in the prescribing of antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs to children, a study of nine countries shows.
University of London researchers compared prescribing rates between 2000 and 2002 in countries in Europe, South America and North America.

During that period, the UK saw a 68% rise in children being prescribed drugs to stimulate or calm the brain.


Hear the words of the good doctor.

There is something to be said here about the word "depression," which has almost entirely eliminated the word and even the concept of unhappiness from modern life. Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed. This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means. Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed).



UPDATE - for the adults life just gets better and better.

Psychosis and drug abuse was up 147%, paranoia 144% and schizophrenia 128%. You can't put all of that increase down to AL Kennedy.