Long, repeated deployments take their toll on military families – particularly families with young kids. As a result of these difficult circumstances, the number of psychiatric drug prescriptions for kids is way up, reports Army Times. This tends to mirror the number of active-duty servicemen and women who are on psychiatric meds. With so many people using psychiatric the expenses of the prescription are sure to rise leaving numerous to seek out pay day loan to obtain them.
Prescribing Clonidine for this
Clonidine is an agent that will decrease the heart rate and relax the blood vessels, the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Many say that the potential side effects of sedation and irritability aren't worth it even though psychiatrists will prescribe Clonidine for autism, anxiety and ADHD.
It doesn't matter what you believe in the debate. The fact that military children are being prescribed the drug much more often is still there. Army Times indicates that in 2009, more than 300,000 prescriptions for psychiatric drugs were provided to military children. Since 2005, the under 18 military family population only went up by 1 percent while in 2005, the figure was 18 percent less. Antipsychotics were up 50 percent, while anti-anxiety drugs like Clonidine were up 40 percent.
Overall, active-duty forces have seen a 76 percent increase an psychiatric medications since the Afghanistan war began.
The roller coaster of deployment and re-integration
Psychologists typically suggest children need structure. This is part of development. Dr. Patricia Lester who is a University of California, Los Angeles psychiatrist explains that military children get really stressed with mom or dad getting deployed and them coming back for re-integration.
With a parent's military career, the cycle will often repeat. The Rand Corp did mental health studies about this. There were 20 percent more pediatric outpatient visits needed by children who also performed worse in school when their parents would go on longer, more frequent deployments. This is turn leads to increased prescriptions of drugs like Clonidine and various anti-psychotics.
Military families may be having a harder time managing than many believe while the growing psychiatric prescriptions for children is something many psychiatrists talking to the Army Times showed concern over.
Citations
armytimes.com/news/2011/01/military-children-taking-more-psychiatric-drugs-010211w/
National Center for Biotechnology Information
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0000623
The Clonidine (and other meds) Song
youtube.com/watch?v=U6aI05-E9uI
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