Should You Medicate Your Child's Mind?

Book excerpt: Millions of parents are facing whether to medicate their children for psychiatric disorders—from depression to ADHD to bipolar disorder. Now physician and psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Roberts explains the risks and benefits of medicating and not medicating children and demystifies and simplifies the process of separating psychiatric illness from the other more common behavioral patterns in children, particularly defiance, or willfulness. Dr. Roberts clearly explains what she discusses every day with the parents of the hundreds of children she treats. How is a parent to know which behaviors are bio-chemical and which are simply the result of willfulness? When should a parent seek a child psychiatrist's help in medicating their child? How can you find a doctor you can trust? When is it more appropriate to use behavioral techniques? Roberts' insight will be invaluable in helping families wade through all the contradictory recommendations that the media, the Internet, teachers, relatives, friends and neighbors, and nonspecialist doctors provide.