Dr.
William Cooper, author of the study and a pediatrician at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital is concerned, mostly because “it looks like these medications are being used for a large numbers of children in a setting where we don’t know if they work.”
Anti-psychotic drugs, like the heavily marketed Zyprexa and Risperdal, are actually meant to be used to control schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses. Cooper notes that, nevertheless, their safety and effectiveness in children has not been established.
According to an Associated Press article that outlines the specifics of the study, doctors prescribe these medicines to children with attention deficit disorder in order to control outbursts of temper and other disruptive behaviors that interrupt school and home life. Many doctors and parents tout the great success of pills like Zyprexa and Risperdal in controlling this difficult behavior.
Such drugs are quite expensive, often costing several dollars per pill. Many doctors point out that they are much safer than many of the older anti-psychotic drugs, though, technically, this has only been determined in use by adults. Opponents note that the drugs still cause quite a few serious side effects in older users, such as weight gain, diabetes, and high cholesterol. As the drugs were not tested on children, no one knows whether or not they will suffer the same ill effects or perhaps other more serious side effects.
