Skip to main content

There's A Pill For That...

Take 12 of these and call me in a month
There's an article out via the New York Times about a physician in Georgia who's prescribing ADHD meds to children who live in poor neighborhoods, and don't have ADHD, to help them concentrate and boost school performance.  His rationale is because we, as a nation, aren't investing in changing these kids' environments, the only other option is to "change the kid."  This story bothers me immensely for several reasons, but it got me thinking about my role as a clinical psychologist; or specifically psychologists as a collective, especially those in private practice.

I did a poll with my friends at the Great Bowel Movement about mental health care and living with IBD.  One of the questions I asked was "If you've considered seeing a therapist, what are some of the barriers that you've encountered." People could check off as many items as they wanted - things such as "not enough time," "finding a therapist who specializes in IBD," "bad experience with a past therapist," etc.  27% endorsed "many therapists don't accept insurance" as a barrier.  

There's a debate among psychologists in private practice about accepting insurance that I first learned about while in graduate school.  There are some compelling (and not so compelling) arguments out there as to why psychologists shouldn't accept insurance.  I read on one practitioner's website that a psychologist who accepts insurance isn't nearly as experienced or maybe not as competent because they accept insurance because they can't generate referrals elsewhere.  Needless to say, as someone early in their career and who believes in accepting insurance, I was slightly offended.  With attitudes like this floating around, it's not surprising that many psychologists either accept 1 plan or none at all.  Personally, I've always felt that it was a professional responsibility to allow clients to use their insurance for psychological care.  

Back to the original article, which is about low-income children.  Although I don't doubt that there are kids in middle through upper classes who are getting these meds for the same reasons.  Depending on the state, Medicaid will not pay for seeing a psychologist - Illinois is one of them.  There is also variability in what private insurance companies will cover for mental health, although recent laws have been put in place to remove these limitations.  Unfortunately, their enactment has been painfully slow.

So why is it even shocking that parents are turning to these pills to help their children?  We can blame our "quick fix" society, I suppose.  But how much of the above has contributed to this attitude?  Maybe parents and kids don't want to take powerful psychiatric medications and would prefer to learn skills or work through issues to make lasting changes in their behavior.  But it's just not easily accessible, making the prescription that is cheaper and convenient to fill (can there be any more Walgreen's in the greater Chicago area?) the more attractive option.  I realize I'm ignoring many other factors at play in this incredibly complex issue.  But I do believe that we, as psychologists, need to do more.

Popular posts from this blog

So You Have IBD During a Pandemic

Hey! What's going on? Been pretty boring over here in Chicago. Ok I don't need to elaborate on what the hell is going on in the world. We are being bombarded with information - some accurate, a lot inaccurate - about this pandemic. It's very easy to become completely overwhelmed by it all. We've been forced, pretty damn quickly, to completely overhaul our way of life for the greater good. To reduce the strain on our healthcare system of the sick and dying. And us humans are generally bad with rapid, monumental change that we really don't have a lot of say in. Our little reptilian brains do what they're supposed to do (prime us for fight or flight or freeze) but our advanced "thinking" parts of our brain have to interject with all sorts of unhelpful thoughts, thereby sending some of us off the rails. Before we start, turn off the news. Seriously. In the days following 9-11 we found people who consumed more 24-hour news channel information were mor

Psychosocial aspects of having an ostomy

This past Saturday, Tiffany and I had the honor of speaking at the United Ostomy Associations of America's Regional Midwest conference. I was assigned the task of speaking to the patients, and Tiffany addressed the partners or caregivers. I wanted to share with you some of the highlights from my talk. I only had an hour for my session, and with about 100 people in the room, it was not nearly enough time. I love bullet points, so here you go: We are all different! Every ostomate is different and not one size fits all for the emotional/mental aspect either. Who had months to talk about an ostomy and weigh pros/cons? Who was this a more sudden decision for? Who had cancer? Who had IBD? Something else? Who had an ileostomy? colostomy? urostomy? Who has a temporary? Permanent? Multiple temporaries? What age where you when you got your ostomy? Under 20, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60+ Who was single when they got their ostomy? With a serious partner when they had it? Some find a stom

IBD & Medical Trauma

Medical trauma is such an under-recognized issue for the chronnically ill. It's a hard topic to talk about because it can seem like we are pointing fingers at healthcare workers. Maybe that's why there are only, now, 4 studies on the topic in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). If you are someone who treats people with IBD please know I am not here to demonize or criticize. I am both a patient and a GI psychologist. I know the medical system from both sides. I know how messed up and broken it is. But ignoring this or rationalizing it away as only affecting a few folks is wrong. So let's talk about it. Post-traumatic stress (PTS) is the term we use for medical trauma due to technicalities in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTS can be less severe that full on PTSD, or it can be full on PTSD. Regardless, the symptoms are identical: Feeling hypervigilant/on-edge (increased