Military households with children are subjecting their kids to a large deal of stress when deployment time comes. To fill the mom- or dad-shaped hole, Army Times reports that more military families than ever are resorting to psychiatric drugs like Clonidine for their kids – because for some reason, big feelings need to be feared. Mostly, this troubling trend also mirrors the overall increase of psychiatric drug prescriptions to enlisted men and women. With so many individuals using psychiatric the costs of the prescription are sure to rise leaving numerous to seek out pay day loans to obtain them.
Johnny will feel better with Clonidine
Clonidine is explained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Supposedly the heart rate is decreased while the blood vessels relax with the agent. Many say that the potential side effects of sedation and irritability aren't worth it even though psychiatrists will prescribe Clonidine for autism, anxiety and ADHD.
It doesn't matter what you believe in the debate. The fact that military children are being prescribed the drug much more often is still there. According to the Army Times, there have been a ton of psychiatric drugs given to military children. In fact, in 2009, there were 300,000 given alone. That figure is 18 percent higher than it was in 2005, and the under-18 military family population increased by less than 1 percent over that span. With antipsychotics, there has been a 50 percent increase in the number prescribed. A 40 percent increase has been shown in anti-anxiety drugs like Clonidine though.
Overall, active-duty forces have seen a 76 percent increase an psychiatric medications since the Afghanistan war began.
How deployment and re-integration has changed this
Psychologists typically suggest children need structure. This is part of development. Dr. Patricia Lester who is a University of California, Los Angeles psychiatrist explains that military children get really stressed with mom or dad getting deployed and them coming back for re-integration.
These cycles repeat over the course of a parent’s military career, an assertion that is borne out in mental health studies conducted such as the one conducted by the Rand Corp. There were 20 percent more pediatric outpatient visits needed by children who also performed worse in school when their parents would go on longer, more frequent deployments. Drugs like Clonidine and anti-psychotics ended up being prescribed more because of this.
Military families may be having a harder time managing than many believe while the growing psychiatric prescriptions for children is something many psychiatrists talking to the Army Times showed concern over.
Information from
armytimes.com/news/2011/01/military-children-taking-more-psychiatric-drugs-010211w/
National Center for Biotechnology Information
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0000623
The Clonidine (and other meds) Song
youtube.com/watch?v=U6aI05-E9uI
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