Abstract
A number of factors are thought to increase the risk of serious psychiatric disorder, including a family history of mental health issues and/or childhood trauma. As a result, some mental health advocates argue for a pre-emptive approach that includes the use of powerful anti-psychotic medication with young people considered at-risk of developing bipolar disorder or psychosis. This controversial approach is enabled and, at the same time, obscured by medical discourses that speak of promoting and maintaining youth “wellbeing”, however, there are inherent dangers both to the pre-emptive approach and in its positioning within the discourse of wellbeing. This chapter critically engages with these dangers by drawing on research with “at-risk” children and young people enrolled in special schools for disruptive behaviour. The stories told by these highly diagnosed and heavily medicated young people act as a cautionary tale to counter the increasingly common perception that pills and “Dr Phil’s” can cure social ills.
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Notes
- 1.
The MTA Longitudinal Treatment Study has since found that medication has no additive benefit over time – at 36 months all four groups performed equally (see discussion in Graham 2010).
- 2.
The Australian government has allocated every school in Australia with a score on the Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage based on parent occupation, educational level and achievement, and school characteristics including remoteness and percentage of Indigenous students. ICSEA has a mean of 1,000 and a standard deviation of 100.
- 3.
Significant weight gain is a known side effect of Respirdal (Parikh et al. 2008).
- 4.
Funding for parent and principal interviews was provided by Macquarie University’s Concentrations of Research Excellence (CoRE) program.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (DP110103093) and a Macquarie University Concentration of Research Excellence (CoRE) grant. The views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council. Ethics approval was obtained from the Macquarie University Ethics Committee (Final Approval No. 5201000654) and the NSW Department of Education and Communities (SERAP No. 2011027).
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Graham, L.J. (2015). To Be Well Is to Be Not Unwell: The New Battleground Inside Our Children’s Heads. In: Wright, K., McLeod, J. (eds) Rethinking Youth Wellbeing. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-188-6_2
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