Sautter

1 Jacqueline Sautter Ms. Caruso ENGL 1102 9 April 2013

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/70092244?strkid=1910842054_0_0&trkid=222336&moviei d=70092244

Memo: I have chosen to do my project on the program on television made by Frontline News in 2008 called The Medicated Child. As I watched this video I saw a lot of what I went through as a child when I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder at the age of seven, and it left me wondering whether the medications that I had taken when I was young had led to my later diagnosis of depression and anxiety when I was a teenager. I will be writing a speech to deliver to concerned parents who are heavily medicating their child, and to people like myself who have experienced the struggle of being medicated. I will go through this video and pick it apart and explore many of the issues that were brought up throughout it such as overmedicating a child causing death, possible serious side effects of anti-depressants, the different views of the doctors interviewed in this video, what was implemented to warn parents of the risk of the medications, different methods of treating these mental illnesses besides medications. Later, I will discuss what are the leading medications now in treating some mental disorders and their effects. Although my target audience will be to parents who are medicating their children and teens I would like to specifically target the parents in the audience who are medicating their

Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:34 AM Comment [1]: Be sure you narrow the memo down to 100-150 words right now, its 293.

Sautter 2 children who are as young as three to the age of twelve because this seems to be the scariest and most unknown age gap when it comes to mental illness and the medications the should or should not be prescribed. Is the child just acting their age, and have a lazy parent, or is there an underlying issue that needs to be addressed and treated? Is Medication the Answer? What would you do if you found a four-year-old child lying dead on the floor covered only by a blanket? This is exactly what happened to an adorable little girl by the name of Rebecca Riley. She had been heavily medicated from the age of two until she died at the tender age of four. The autopsy showed that she had ten-times the recommended amount of Clonidine in her blood stream when she died. There is no one to stick up for these innocent angels that die from being overmedicated before it is too late. Tonight I am going to help inform you on this issue so that you can make the proper decision as to whether or not you or your child really needs the medications that your doctor is prescribing. I want to do this so that this horrifying incident happens to you or any of your loved ones far less often then than it does now. When I was seven years old in second grade, I was diagnosed with ADHD because I had problems focusing in class, and my grades were dropping, so I was put on Ritalin. At first it seemed to work because my grades came back up, and my teachers were noticing a difference in my behavior. After taking the medication for two months my parents noticed a dramatic weight loss, which was very scary because I was already a very lean and petite child. Also as a young child, you do not want to be different from anyone else because kids can be very mean, and the other children were noticing that I had to go to the office during lunch, and everyone knew that if you had to go to the office during the day you were on some kind of medication. This caused them to make fun of me, which made me very unhappy; I was then forever labeled as the weird
Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:43 AM Comment [4]: This sentence is a bit long and winding for a speech, but you do make your point/ Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:42 AM Comment [3]: Although the content of these sentences is effective, the sentence structure calls you to come to a complete stop at the end of each sentence, therefore interrupting the flow of speech. Try working on varying your sentence structures and lengths for effect. Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:41 AM Comment [2]: For your memo, position the content as what you actually do, rather than as what you plan to do, since the memo itself sets up the product. Also, where exactly will this speech be given? How will you collect these parents to present this speech?

Sautter 3 kid. After coming to this realization my doctor changed my medication to Concerta, which made me much happier to be on because it was longer lasting so I did not have to go to the office to take any medications during the day. This helped with the ridicule I was getting from my peers for the most part, and I was much happier. When I got into high school I was put on Aderall, for treatment of my ADHD, because it worked better for me then Concerta did anymore. By the time I got to middle school my parents were able to help me modify my behaviors so that I could learn to control my impulses and helped me learn how to stay focused. Some things that helped a lot were just focusing on one thing at a time rather those five things at once. Also my parents got me into sports, which taught me how to achieve small goals, built my confidence, and calmed down my hyperactivity. My mom does not believe that the medications I was on caused my later diagnosis of depression and anxiety. Later, after watching Frontlines show called The Medicated Child I am left wondering if in fact the medications I was on while my brain was still developing may have caused a chemical imbalance causing my new diagnoses. I have wonderful parents who have loved and supported me through out all of my struggles with mental illness. They always got me the help that I needed and paid for the medications to help me get better. Parents like mine were one in a million, and I was lucky to have them around to keep me on track towards my goal of good grades and calmed behavior. Other children are not as lucky as I was though, this is the case of the little girl that I talked about earlier in this speech named Rebecca Riley. As I said earlier she died of an overdose of psychiatric drugs. She was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder at the tender age of two. What I questioned was why was a toddler diagnosed with any kind of psychiatric illness, what two year old does not seem psychotic at one point or another? Forensic experts ruled her death due to
Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:46 AM Comment [7]: This sentence would be seamless in its flow if you didnt call attention to the fact that this is a speech. Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:45 AM Comment [6]: You only mention one in this sentence. Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:44 AM Comment [5]: For sentences such as this and the one in comment 4, work on conveying the ideas more succinctly. As with the other sentence, you do make your point, but the sentence is a bit wordy.

Sautter 4 heart and lung damage caused by prescription medications. (Bremner, par. 1) Later this online article states that the medications she was on were Seroquel (quetiapine), Depakote (valproic acid), and clonidine. The FDA, for use in children, approves not one of these medications; furthermore they caused her to have further medical problems with which her parents put her on more medications to treat the new illness. These drugs put together made a toxic and deathly cocktail for this poor little four-year-old girl and lead to her death. How would you feel if this had been your child? Would you feel responsible? Her mother Carolyn Riley has already been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her daughter.(Bremner, par. 4) So whether she wanted to be held responsible or not, she was. You may be asking yourself though, why am I listening to this? Neither my child nor me is on psychotropic medications we are on antidepressants, whats wrong with those? Well in adults older than 25 there is little to no risk for suicidal thoughts caused by these medications, but for adolescents 12 and older the risk goes up. Even scarier though is the risk for suicidal thoughts and tendencies see in studies done on children. The analysis showed that children taking antidepressants had about a 4 percent chance of developing suicidal thoughts or behavior (Mayo Clinic, par.3) This scared the FDA so much that they put a public advisory out on all anti depressants, and made all of the drug companies put a warning on their medications. It went so far that they put what is called a Black Box warning on the information slips put in their medications which consists of a dark black box with white lettering stating the risk of drug. This gives the message a dramatic and eye catching illusion to make sure people see the warning. In the Frontline show that I am using as a background for my topic today, the reporters do a segment in which they show the trials that were held to help the parents of children who
Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:50 AM Comment [10]: Convincing paragraph! Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:51 AM Comment [11]: You might want to just condense this to: Within The Medicated Child to keep the attention off of the speech itself. Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:49 AM Comment [9]: The information in this paragraph makes sense, but I can see what you meant when you said in your note that you werent sure how your research meshed with the other content. Try working on transitioning from one sentence to the next. It might be that the paragraph is a bit too choppy for the research at this point.

Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:47 AM Comment [8]: Except with block quotes, always put the period after the citation. Also, no comma is needed.

Sautter 5 committed suicide that had been taking antidepressants. One girl was as young as 12 years old with such a long life ahead of her. These parents were outrage and crying out for help. Trying to figure out why their children would take their own lives. This prospect seems scary. A child taking their own life is such taboo in every culture, but we cannot ignore the way we treat each other and the things that we put into our bodies. Yes, these children may just have not been happy with their lives, but you cannot overlook the other possibility that maybe there was another underlying reason that they did something so drastic. All I am saying is try not to use the medicines at first, but if you have to take antidepressants or are thinking about putting your child on them, just make sure that you talk to your doctor, psychiatrist, or family physician. Weigh all of your options before you automatically go for the drug option. Many of the doctors in this news broadcast seem to be hardened advocates for medicating mental illness in children, and yes I do agree with most of them that there is always a child who absolutely with out a doubt who needs to be medicated to help their quality of life. Where do you draw the line though? I found that there were two different types of controversial treatments that are being given to children that caught my attention. The first is the treat before the illness gets worse approach in which the doctor will treat the children at risk for mental illness before the illness even presents itself with antipsychotic medications. A Doctor named Kiki Chang, M.D, does this. He says that it runs in families, and then does a scan of the brain to look at a cluster of neurons that are deep within the brain called the amygdala. He has found that there is a significant decrease in volume of these neurons compared to kids with a normal disposition, whatever that is. This he believes may be a cause of bipolar disorder, but does admit that it is not yet known to be 100 percent accurate.
Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:53 AM Comment [12]: Be sure you are paying attention to your sentences and that the pieces of the sentence are parallel. These are two very different types of actions that dont seem to mesh well in the sentence together.

Sautter 6 The other very interesting treatment they spoke of was called Brain Matters they believe that they can diagnose undiagnosed disorders and treat them with medications using a machine that only measures blood flow patterns in the brain. It is mostly controversial because of its location on a Commercial Strip in Denver which tends to make a medical company look less professional, also not all of the people treating people who go there are M.D.s which makes many people uneasy as to whether or not they believe that it is a reliable source for people to use to help treat their mental disabilities. One thing I have always put stock in are alternative treatments for children who clearly have a mental disorder, but who may not necessarily need the medications to treat them. Well for ADHD there have been a few proposed ideas such as diet changes like decreasing sugars and increasing fiber to help decrease the spike of glucose in the bloodstream to help with hyperactivity. A man named Doctor Ben Feingold did another type of diet change that was widely antagonized by much of the medical community. He believed that if you took away certain food dyes from the diet it would help the child focus, but most scientific studies have disproved his theories. (WebMD, par. 3). Another non-drug treatment includes classes parents can take to help them learn about different behaviors that their child has. It is easier to parent a child with ADHD if you understand how the disorder affects your child. From all of the research that I have done on what medications were used in the Frontline program The Medicated Child on children with Bipolar Disorder have not changed much in the past years doctors are still prescribing Lithium, lamotrigine and valproic acid, antidepressants, and atypical antipsychotics (NIMH, par. 21,24,26,29). These drugs cause such side effects as drowsiness, dizziness, headaches, mood swings, agitation, sleep problems, and list goes on and on. (NIMH, par. 21,24,26,29) You may wonder why we are giving our children

Sautter 7 these drugs and why we would ingest them. Well the answer is simple, both our children and us needs them desperately to live a healthy and stable life, which seems to be worth the risk of all the medications. One other medication discussed in the show is antidepressants. Well despite the risk many people in my life including myself are taking them. You may wonder if I struggle from the symptom of increased thoughts of suicide and the answer would be yes, but I can move past these terrifying thoughts because I have too much to live for like my family, friends, and my puppy Coco. They love me and it would be too selfish of me to take my own life just to get over the pain of life. That is was life is about; pain is a way for us to know that we are still alive. Decisions about mental health are extremely difficult and should not in any way be taken lightly. All I am hoping that any of you got out of this is just to make sure that you do your research. I cannot stress that enough because you do not want to be the cause of some kind of harm coming to yourself or to your child. One can only imagine what kind of pain and regret that would come to someone who took the easy way out, and treated their child with so many medications that they result in the illness, injury, or even death of your child. You must stay informed and on top of the new treatments and medications on the market and figure out what works best for your or your child because no on can tell you what is right, that is your decision. Remember there are alternatives to medications you just have to look for them.
Beth Caruso 4/12/13 10:02 AM Comment [14]: Jackie, Overall, this was a great speech, and it would certainly convince me to think twice about the implications of medicating a child. As you work to revise, I would suggest that you work on more methodically crafting your sentences and expanding upon your research. In your note, you mentioned that you were hoping to keep the same tone throughout, but it seems that when you transition into the second half of your speech, that your sentences are rushed that you only use information from one source, and you work very quickly to get through it. Your speech is strong, and you should definitely be proud of yourself for it. Im looking forward to how you strengthen it even more for the revision. -Ms. C Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:56 AM Comment [13]: You may want to put a paragraph such as this with the paragraph that contains the other information about antidepressants. What have been noticing throughout your speech is that you tend to talk about the information that was in the show, but you dont elaborate upon this information with your own. As you are giving the updates on the information here, your audience is needing to recall what you had said earlier after you have already moved away from the subject.

Sautter 8 Works Cited Bremner, Doug. Rebecca Riley: Tragic Death of a Four-Year-Old From Multiple Psychotropic Medications. Before you take that pill. 31 Aug. 2010. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. Mayo Clinic Staff. Teen Depression Antidepressants for Children: Explore the pros and cons. Mayo Clinic. 10 Aug. 2012. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. The Medicated Child. Frontline News. PBS. 8 Jan. 2008. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Alternative Treatments. ADHD in Children Help Center. WebMD. Web. 24 Mar. 2013. National Institute of Mental Health. Bipolar Disorder in Parents and Teens: A Parents Guide. NIMH. 8 Apr. 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2013.

Sautter 9 More Research 1. The purpose of my piece is to inform people about how medicating children and themselves can cause problems later in life, although my main point is that I just want people to be aware. I still need to maybe talk to some doctors and get a first hand look into the field of child psychology. 2. Well a lot of what the doctors were saying went over my head, and I would need to definitely research more about some things they said to truly understand what exactly they meant or to further understand their methods. 3. The program that I am responding to in my speech seems to stem from a conversation about medicating children at such a young age because there were a lot of differing opinions given by all of the different doctors in the broadcast. It definitely stems from a much larger conversation. 4. When I wrote my proposal I thought I would definitely be able to find some information on new medications and treatments from 2008 until now, but that was not possible because the treatments are still the same because there still has not been enough research done on medicating mental illness in childhood. Treating the different illnesses is still mostly up to the discretion of the doctor. 5. I feel that I did all that I promised in my introduction. 6. The audience that I chose was the parents in the audience at a conference who are medicating their children. Although I definitely had to do research to further understand my topic, I had enough personal experience in the issue of medicating mental illness in children to be able to speak directly to the parents.
Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:38 AM Comment [16]: In places such as this, try to be more specific so you can go back to it later.

Beth Caruso 4/12/13 9:38 AM Comment [15]:

Sautter 10 7. The unintended audience in my piece would most likely be the people in the audience who are medicating themselves for mental illnesses or who were heavily medicated as a child. In the beginning of my speech they will probably expect me to be very judgmental, but as I get to the part about my personal experiences with the topic they might change their ideas about what I am going to say. 8. In order to really feel comfortable giving a speech at a conference I should probably go to a conference and listen to someone give a speech to be able to better under the context of my speech.