"Medication Mania: A Look at Our National Love Affair with Psychotropic Medications. Implications for Behavioral Practice."

A short, but provocative session at the ABA International Annual Conference, Phoenix, will be addressing the issues of why we have such strong cultural reliance on psychotropic medications to treat psychological disorders, and are we taking too many and possibly for the wrong reasons?


Psychotropic medication in treating psychological disorder is almost a cultural given--with a diversity of new formulations and brands emerging almost continuously. There is also a concurrent questioning about the effectiveness, increasing prescription "off-label" to populations not studied in trials, side-effects and safety, and is there a tendency to over-prescribe to increasing numbers of people?

These questions are illustrated by a sampling of articles in recent years from the NYTimes,

Study Finds Jump in Children Taking Psychiatric Drugs
By ERICA GOODE
Published: Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Drugs Offer No Benefit in Curbing Aggression, Study Finds
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: January 4, 2008

Doctors Say Medication Is Overused in Dementia
By LAURIE TARKAN
Published: June 24, 2008

and this program from Frontline, PBS

The Medicated Child

Another relevant question is whether behavior analytic therapeutic models of addressing behavioral disorders are being given sufficient credit and use when they would be be at least as effective, if not more?

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5/24/2009

5:00 p.m.- 5:20 p.m.
North 222 C
CBM
Chair: W. Joseph Wyatt (Marshall University)
Medication Mania: A Look at Our National Love Affair with Psychotropic Medications. Implications for Behavioral Practice. (Service Delivery)
W. JOSEPH WYATT (Marshall University)

Abstract:

Behavior analysts must contend with the variables that tend to make psychotropic medication a more frequent, but often less effective and less efficient, means of changing behavior. Aware that knowledge is power, this presentation will review tactics of both the pharmaceutical industry and of organized medicine that maintain a preference for "pills over skills" among professionals and the populace.

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References and for further reading

Wyatt, J.W., & Midkiff, D.M. (2006a). Biological psychiatry: A practice In search of a science. Behavior and Social Issues, 15(2), 132-151.

Wyatt, W. J. & Midkiff, D. M. (2006b). Six-to-one gets the job done: Comments on the reviews.
Behavior and Social Issues, 15(2), 222-231.

Wyatt, J.W., & Midkiff, D.M. (2007). Psychiatry's thirty-five year, non-empirical reach for biological explanations. Behavior and Social Issues, 16(2), 197-213

For other articles which are commentary and replies, the reader is directed to the balance of volume 15, issue 2 of Behavior and Social Issues (Fall/Winter 2006)

and volume 16, issue 2 of Behavior and Social Issues (Fall/Winter 2007)

Flora, S.R. (2007). Taking America off drugs: Why behavioral therapy is more effective for treating ADHD, OCD, depression, and other psychological problems. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press

Psychiatry by prescription: Do psychotropic drugs blur the boundaries between illness and health?
by Ashley Pettus
Harvard magazine, July/August 2006

The Business of ADHD
Frontline, 2001

Matson, J. L., & Wilkins, J.(2008). Editorial: Antipsychotic drugs for aggression in intellectual disability. The Lancet (371), 9606, 9-10. Free text with registration.

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11 days and counting...

DISCLAIMER: Personal opinion and blog, not an official outlet intended to represent ABA-International® or other official entity or organization.

"Medication Mania: A Look at Our National Love Affair with Psychotropic Medications. Implications for Behavioral Practice."