Antidepressant No More Effective Than Placebo For Autistic Children

Experts are starting to reconsider the appropriateness of antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs used to treat children who have been diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorders.

Autism is characterized by problems with communication and social interaction. It sometimes involves obsessive, repetitive behaviour and also tantrums in response to frustration. Only one drug, the antipsychotic drug risperidone, has actually been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of irritability and aggression in children with autism, but some doctors have prescribed other pharmaceuticals for these symptoms.

Few medications have undergone rigorous testing on autistic children, so doctors have tended to prescribe drugs used for similar symptoms in other conditions. This has led to the use of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, that help adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Dr. Bryan King, director of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at Seattle Children's Hospital and leader of the study, was shocked to find that the placebo was slightly more effective than Citalopram, sold in the US under the name of Celexa, and that furthermore the drug's side-effects, impulsiveness and insomnia, were at least twice as bad.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Should we not all be reconsidering the use of powerful, mind-altering drugs on children? Are these drugs doing more harm than good?

My personal opinion is that good nutrition is the best medicine for most illnesses, and that children are given a good foundation for health if they are provided with healthy, low-salt meals and protected, as far as possible from processed food and diet junk.

Source: LA Times

Margaret Wilde www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk