The New York Times reported that Rebecca Riley, a four year old girl from near Boston, was found dead on the morning of December 13, a victim of an apparent overdose of the psychiatric drugs Seroquel, an antipsychotic drug; Depakote, a powerful anti-seizure medicine used for mood control, and Clonidine, a blood pressure drug often prescribed to calm children. Rebecca had been diagnosed at having bipolar disorder at the age of two! So some overzealous psychiatrist had diagnosed her as been manic depressive at age 2.

Now this is pretty crazy. A child at two is a work in progress, and if is virtually impossible to diagnose anything at that age. The only exceptions are the developmental disorders, such as autism. Probably Rebecca was a difficult child, prone to moodiness and maybe even tantrums. So her parents, with a willing psychiatrist, gave her mind-numbing drugs to calm her, rather than learning better parenting skills. From the article: “A relative of her mother, Carolyn Riley, 32, told the police that Rebecca seemed “sleepy and drugged” most days, according to the charging documents. One preschool teacher said that at about 2 p.m. every day the girl came to life, “as if the medication Rebecca was on was wearing off,” according to the documents.”

This is more than sad, it is pitiful. How many other, nondrug interventions were tried before using medication? Was there parenting training? Was there a home visit, to see how Rebecca and her parents were interacting? The article does not say, but I’m guessing that none of these things were done. There’s an old saying, “Give a young boy a hammer, and everything becomes a nail.” In much the same way, bringing a child to a psychiatrist means that they are likely to get drugs. That’s why the first stop for children, especially young children, should be to a child psychologist, a psychologist who specializes in treating children and their families.

It should also be noted that most psychiatric medications are not and have never been approved for use in young children. There are no studies of using these drugs on toddlers. Although it might be occasionally reasonable to use drugs meant for adults on older teenagers, who are at least biologically similar to adults, it is irresponsible at best to use these drugs with young children.

The problem is that giving kids drugs is too easy. From the New York Times article, “Paraphrasing H. L. Mencken, Dr. Carlson added, ‘Every serious problem has an easy solution that is usually wrong.’” Behavioral problems in children can be very serious, and the behavioral interventions take time and commitment. Learning good parenting techniques, such as the proper use of time-outs and other interventions, takes dedication and a competent psychologist’s help.

As with adults, medications should always be reserved for after all other interventions have failed. And with children, only medications that have been tested on children, and used for years should be tried. If psychiatrists want to prescribe these medications for children, let them first run the research trials required by the FDA to test safety and effectiveness. Let’s not kill anymore Rebecca Riley’s!

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Copyright 2007 The Psychology Lounge/TPL Productions

More from Peter Cramer’s book Against Depression, which I heartily recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about depression.

We talked about the full blown diagnosis of depression. For a diagnosis of major depression you need 5 or more symptoms for at least 2 weeks. What if a patient has only 2 or 3 symptoms for 2 weeks? Is that a problem?

First of all these mild depressions can be the precursor or follow-up to major depression. So they are important for that reason.

But even if there is no major depression, mild depression looks like major depression. Mild depression runs in families where major depression is prevalent. Low level depression causes disability, absenteeism, more medical visits.

Another type of mild depression is dysthymia. Dysthymia means being sad at least 50% of the time, for 2 years or more. And dysthymia is not the same as unhappiness. Dysthymics suffer the same relentless internal stress, the hopelessness, sadness, and low self-esteem of the depressed. The fact that they may function well, or eat and sleep well, is of small comfort to them.

The problem with dysthymia and mild depression is that medications may be less effective with these conditions, and some types of psychotherapy, more effective. Although no one exactly knows, the general consensus is that dysthymia is less responsive to antidepressants than is major depression. But it may be more responsive to cognitive behavioral therapy.

In summary, even mild depression has serious impacts on people. Mild depression can be effectively treated with cognitive behavioral therapy, and responds well to it.

Copyright 2006 The Psychology Lounge/TPL Productions

I’m still reading Peter Cramer’s book Against Depression, which is his follow-up to Listening to Prozac, his groundbreaking book about depression and Prozac. This is a fascinating book, as good as Listening to Prozac. I continue to be impressed by his scholarship and ability to pull interesting research together. If you have any interest at all in learning more about depression, I would strongly recommend this book, which is a philosophical and scientific exploration of depression.

What is the natural history of depression? That is, what happens later in life if you get depressed now? Do you recover, or do you have more depressions?

We have good data on this issue from some studies funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. These studies followed depressed patients over many years. The findings are astounding, at least to me.

They show that if you are diagnosed as being depressed today, there is a 20 percent chance you will still be depressed 2 years later, and a 7 percent chance you will still be depressed ten years later, and a 6 percent chance you will be depressed 15 years later!

Even if you recovered, your probability of relapse is high. In these studies, most patients had subsequent depressions: 40 percent at two years, 60 percent at five years, 75 percent at ten years, and 87 percent at 15 years.

And with each episode of depression the prognosis worsens. After the second episode of depression, the 2 year recurrence rate soars to 75 percent!

One likely explanation for this effect is called kindling. The kindling model was first developed to explain how epilepsy works. In epilepsy, each seizure you have makes you more likely to have more seizures. This is because the seizure damages the brain.

We now think that each major depression may alter the brain as well. Particularly it may cause a shrinking of cells in several important areas of the brain. One of these is the hippocampus, which governs the formation of short term memory. Another is the prefrontal cortex, which has many functions in reasoning.

And how many patients got treatment? Only 3 percent of the patients who were diagnosed with depression had ever received even a single one month trial of anti-depressant medication! This is shameful in a country that claims to have good health care.

So what do we learn from these studies?

1. Depression is a chronic disease, and relapse is very high.
2. Each relapse makes you more susceptible to future depressions. Each depression erodes the resilience of the brain.
3. A small but substantial percentage of depressed patients remain depressed for years on end.
4. Prevention of initial depressions, early treatment of major depression, and prevention of future depressions can change the natural history of depression, and prevent a lifetime of depression.

The other important thing to realize about these studies is that they only looked at major depression. That is, at depression with many serious symptoms. Later studies that have looked at milder versions of depression have found that even mild depressions predict future major depressions. A future post will talk about minor depression, or dysthymia.

Copyright 2006 The Psychology Lounge/TPL Productions

Here is some more good stuff from Peter Cramer’s book Against Depression, which is his follow-up to Listening to Prozac, his groundbreaking book about depression and Prozac. This is a fascinating book, as good as Listening to Prozac. If you have any interest at all in learning more about depression, I would strongly recommend this book, which is a philosophical and scientific exploration of depression. Much of what follows is inspired by this book.

How big a problem is depression compared to other illnesses? Other health problems such as AIDS, arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are much bigger problems, right?

Wrong. If you look at the impact of depression on disability, very interesting facts emerge. Let me explain how these figures are calculated. Imagine a 20 year old woman develops chronic depression that causes her to be 1/3 disabled for the next 60 years. That means she loses the equivalent of 20 years of life, which is the same as if a healthy woman died at age 60 instead of the normal lifespan of 80.

When disability from depression is calculated this way, the figures are astounding. The World Health Organization looked at this data from around the world. They found that by the year 2020 depression will be the largest cause of disability with the sole exception of heart disease. Even in 1990, depression was already the number one cause of disability within the major chronic diseases of midlife. Major depression accounted for almost 20 percent of disability-adjusted life years lost for women in the developed countries. This was more than three times the amount caused by the next illness.

Other studies looked at the impact of depression in the workplace. In the United States this cost is estimated at over 40 billion dollars, which is almost 3% of the total economy. Being depressed on the job is estimated as the equivalent of calling in sick half a day per week.

Just how common is depression? There are many studies and they often disagree, but the best studies suggest that about 16 percent of Americans will suffer a major depression over their lifetime. That is almost 1 in 6 Americans. Look around at your friends and family and co-workers, 1 in 6 of them will suffer a major depression. In any given year, between 6-7 percent suffer major depression.

And depression has major health implications. Studies that look at elderly people find that depression increases the risk of death very significantly, independent of suicide. One study found that elderly people who were depressed were 40 percent more likely to die than those who were undepressed. When they analyzed the data to see what the cause was, they found that even when you controlled for all other health behaviors and other factors, depression still accounted for 24 percent increase in deaths. This was the equivalent of high blood pressure, smoking, stroke, or congestive heart failure.

So depression is no big deal? Not unless you consider major disability, huge workplace effects, and shortened life a big deal. In reality, depression is one of the most devastating diseases that human beings suffer.

Copyright 2006 The Psychology Lounge/TPL Productions