Psychotropic Drugs for Children and Teens
should changes be made to regulations for mental health drugs to minors? TWO (2) pages Identify topic explain (2) reasons. Include a defensible, relevant thesis statement paragraph. Describe (3) major characteristics audience (official position, decision-making power, current view topic, important characteristics) Describe paper's scope outline major sections.

Should changes be made in regulations governing mental health drugs for minors?

It seems paradoxical: the very drug intended to prevent a particular behavior -- in this case, suicide in teens -- actually has been found to cause it. "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public warning in October 2004 about an increased risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior (suicidality) in children and adolescents treated with SSI antidepressant medications" such as Prozac and Paxil (Antidepressant medications, 2013, NIMH). Children and adolescent brains and bodies are not the same as adults. Yet frequently they are regarded as such….

Psychotropic Drugs
In most cases, counselors will be working with clients who have been prescribed psychotropic drugs to treat their emotional or behavioral issues. Psychotropic drugs are prescribed by healthcare providers to assist clients deal with issues like anxiety and depression. There are several challenges and advantages of working with a client who is being treated with medication like psychotropic drugs. One of these advantages is that medication has a positive impact on the counseling process since it acts as a support to the process. In this case, the medication and counseling helps the client to focus on symptom relief and self-growth respectively. Secondly, working with such clients helps in ensuring that the counseling process is based on a holistic approach to meet the diverse needs of clients. The third advantage is that working with such clients involves addressing both the mental health issues and psychological concerns facing a client. However,….

What further makes interpretation of results difficult to precisely define quantify is that the amount of drug stores depends on the nature of the drug itself, the duration of the ingestion of the drug, and the composition of the tissue holding the drug and the frequency of use. The greater the incidence of drug use the more permanent the level of toxins and chemicals in tissues throughout the body, and therefore the greater the probability of catching chronic drug users in drug testing. Thea difficult part of using drug tests periodically is the longitudinally there may be peaks and valleys to the incidence of drug abuse. Companies have begun surprise inspections of their workers in the most potentially dangerous occupations including forklift workers, construction workers, airline pilots, and heavy equipment workers.
Despite these shortcomings of tests, the advances made in drug testing technologies are gradually overcoming these obstacles related to….

VIII. Preliminary Literature Review

The work of Martin, Scahill, Klin and Volkmar (1999) entitled: "Higher-Functioning Pervasive Developmental Disorders: Rates and Patterns of Psychotropic Drugs Use" reports a study in which the frequency, characteristics and associated target symptoms of psychotropic drug use among individuals with developmental disorders and specifically those with "higher functioning pervasive developmental disorders. (HFPDDs) in a total of 109 children, adolescents and adults results show that 55% of these were taking psychotropic drugs and 29.3% were taking two or more of these medications simultaneously. Conclusions of the study report as follows: "Psychotropic medication use appears to be common among subjects with HFPDDs, yet not generally based on the results of empirical research. Clinical heterogeneity among treated subjects suggests that psychiatric comorbidity may be overlooked in this population." (Martin, Scahill, Klin and Volkmar, 1999) the work of Reynolds and Dombeck (2006) relates that individuals with autism spectrum disorders are often….

esearch questions related to psychotropic medications might include ow can a clinician determine whether a psychotherapeutic treatment is enough or when a psychotropic medication should be prescribed? In what ways can different types of psychotropic medications be abused? In what cases should a clinician avoid giving a medication due to a theory of substance abuse? How often should a clinician run an assessment for substance abuse when he or she has a patient with a psychotropic prescription? Among the most interesting findings in regards to psychotropic medications and dependence are the findings or Lazaratou et al. (2007)., who found that most parents were afraid to give their children psychotropic medications and feared a long time drug use based on the use of the medication, although this is unsubstantiated by research.

eferences

Lazaratou, Helen et al. (2007). Parental attitudes and opinions on the medication in mental disorders of children. Ann….

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) can be an effective alternative intervention to psychotropic medications. The therapy is mainly used for persons experiencing acute episodes of melancholy but may also be recommended for other disorders that include symptoms like catatonia, mania, or schizophrenia. Antipsychotic drugs are more commonly used to treat psychotic episodes (NIMH). ECT may also be helpful for persons who cannot take psychotropic drugs such as pregnant women or seniors.
Research questions related to the use of psychotropic medications"

. What are the long-term effects of taking psychotropic medications? Since they are new to the pharmacopia, what are some of the potential long-term risks of taking psychotropic drugs and might they affect human beings on the level of DNA?

2. Do psychotropic drugs become addictive, or are clients able to wean themselves off them without experiencing recurring symptoms of the clinical disorder? Do they have to be taken long-term?

National Institute of Mental Health….

Prescribing Psychotropic Medications to Minors
It is every parent's worst nightmare: the drugs intended to cure a child kill him or her instead. Since the development of drugs like Prozac and Paxil, drugs classified as SSIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) have been increasingly used to address depression in patients that otherwise would have been treated with talk therapy alone. This is true of adolescents as well as adults, given that SSIs were once thought to have fewer side effects when compared with older types of antidepressants (Antidepressant medications for children and adolescents: Information for parents and caregivers, 2013, NIMH). Since the development of SSIs, the increase in psychotropic drug prescriptions has increased so rapidly that it is estimated that 1 in 5 of all Americans are on some form of psychotropic medication at any one time (Smith 2012:36). However, SSI use in adolescents and young adults has become specifically linked to….

psychotherapeutic drugs overprescribed for treating mental illness?
Pros

With the development of SSIs such as Prozac, some psychotherapists proclaimed the end of depression and there were even concerns that such drugs would change the human character by making treatment of the illness too easy. Now, after many years after the birth of Prozac, it is clear that no antidepressant is a silver bullet when it comes to eliminating a particular mental health problem. In fact, the concerns are that SSIs and other drugs commonly used to treat depression are substantially less effective than their manufacturers claim. "An analysis of all FDA clinical trials for four SSI antidepressants found that the drugs didn't perform significantly better than placebos in treating mild or moderate depression, and the benefits of the drugs were "relatively small even for severely depressed patients" (PLoS Medicine, 2008, cited by Smith 2012:36). Even studies which indicate a more optimistic….

inclined to believe that drug discoveries are often the result of a fortunate set of events making it possible for a person to come across a combination of substances that have the exact effect the respective person considers when starting the discovery process. hile this was the case a few hundreds of years ago, things changed in recent decades, as society got actively involved in promoting drugs and in supporting individuals involved in creating them. One of the best example regarding drug discovery and widespread support from the public is the 1950s with psychotropic drug discoveries. A great deal of drugs from the period came to play an important role in society, considering the fact that they have been widely used during recent decades.
A series of drugs were discovered as a result of individuals using natural products with the purpose of exploiting some of the substances they contained. Fungal….

Michelson explains that buspirone could manipulate certain serotonin receptors in an attempt to ameliorate the overload of serotonin, and that amantadine was thought to increase dopamine activity. As such, either might theoretically help with SSRI-related sexual dysfunction. However, when the double-blind test was performed, it found that the success of treatment was roughly the same regardless of whether these pills were taken or a placebo was used. One significant difference was that those on admantadine had greater energy levels than they study-mates, which did not seem to directly affect sexual functioning. Michelson and his colleagues speculated that the reason for such marked improvement in all categories was the extensive journaling and attention paid to the sexual activity.
Ashton and Rosen report on "Bupropion as an antidote for serotonin reuptake inhibitor-induced sexual dysfunction"

Unlike the Michelson study, Ashton and Rosen's work on using bupropion to ameliorate the sexual dysfunctions associated with SSRIs….

Drug Policy
American Drug Policy: Marijuana

Marijuana is one of the most vilified drugs in history and it very difficult to see just why this is so. The United States used to have a thriving agricultural concern that consisted of hemp (marijuana) famers producing plants for their fibers and seeds. The fibers were used in products such as rope and paper and the seeds were used to make oil which served as a lubricant and a food additive. Unfortunately, people became aware of its psychotropic properties and growing marijuana for any reason was banned. This ban also coincided with the introduction of products that were superior to those made of hemp. The drug usage properties of marijuana had been known for centuries and it had been used in religious ceremonies and as an additive to medicines, but it could also be used in quantities that made the user completely incapacitated for periods….

flow of drugs into the United States, where the drugs are coming from, in what forms they come in and the general attitudes that are taken against the practice by both the United States law enforcement agencies in particular and the United Nations drug control treaties. The author of this report will answer all of those questions in detail and provide the proper sourcing and citations for the same. While some modest successes are made when it comes to the "war on drugs," the United States law enforcement collective is losing the battle and there is a difference of strategy when it comes to a comparison between the United Nations and the United States.
The first question is fairly specific and brief. For each of the five major illicit drugs that are available and that are used in the United States, there will be a summary of what each one….

Discussion

Though a great deal more is known about neurotransmission today than was known at the beginning of the research associated with the initial biological discoveries of neurotransmitters and the neurotransmission process there is still a great deal to be discovered. Neurotransmission disorganization and impairment is clearly identified as a pervasive aspect of many psychological disorders. This is particularly true of the anxiety disorders and OCD. There is no doubt that increased understanding of the various mechanisms of OCD and normal neurotransmission will add to a greater research understanding of the biological causalities and modalities of OCD.

Though the most simplistic and earliest neurotransmission disturbance theories have been largely discounted the research has created ample evidence of disturbances in neurotransmission function (in more complex terms) as the root cause of several psychological disorders including various forms of anxiety disorders the subgroup which OCD falls into.

…this research has revealed the staggering complexity of….

Overlapping Neural Correlates for Food and Drug Addiction
Food Addiction

The Neural Correlates of Food and Drug Addiction Overlap

A recent popular press article in the Huffington Post reviewed a recently published research article that revealed the brain functions in a similar manner whether a person is addicted to food or drugs. Women scoring high as emotional eaters and exposed to a milkshake preferentially activated the anterior cingulate cortex, medial orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and caudate, as imaged by fMI. The lateral orbitofrontal cortex was less active when compared to the brains of subjects scoring low as emotional eaters. These areas correspond to those that have been found to be involved in drug using/seeking behavior, which suggests the mechanisms involved in food and drug addiction are similar or the same. Previously published research studies support this conclusion, although addiction-related behaviors are very complex and additional studies will be required to further….

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Evidence For A Protective Role Of Cannabinoid Receptors. J. Biol. Chem., 275 (41): 31938-31945.

Massi, P., Vaccani, A., Ceruti, S., Colombo, S., Abbracchio, M., and Parolaro,….