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Inattentive? Hyperactive? Impulsive?

Your child may have ADD/ADHD. The good news is professionals have learned that ADD/ADHD is only as medically “serious” as myopia. It’s treatment is as nearly straightforward as vision testing and eyeglasses. Both ADD/ADHD and myopia lead to profoundly negative outcomes if unrecognized and untreated. The difference is, they don’t blame you for not seeing well.
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Drug Cocktails... are they safe?
One of our doctors, Dr. Lyles, is seasoned enough to have learned psychiatry at the “crossover” period between the 1980’s, when Tricyclic antidepressants (abbreviation TCA) first introduced in the 1950’s were still being used as antidepressants, and 1987, when Prozac, an entirely different (and far better) antidepressant was introduced. This was also the period during which the acceptance of “psychoanalytic” theories of mental illness began to decline markedly. It was finally the age of BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY.  Now doctors prescribe drug cocktails with much more patient success.

Back in the day, it was accepted dogma that patients should be on as few medicines as possible, if any (and by the way, this is still the dogma). Despite this, three phenomena have occurred.

•    Patients with more severe illness are seen in clinics (there are many reasons for this);
•    We can diagnose much better than before;
•    We have much BETTER medicines than before, medicines that are safe, well-tolerated and have very few side-effects.

Accordingly, if a 35 year old man suffering obvious Type I Bipolar Disorder (manic-depressive illness) shows up and has lost his last 3 jobs and last 4 relationships because of his symptoms, the doctor is likely to do whatever it takes to help this man.

So, when Lithium helps “a little,” and Lithium and Invega help “a little bit more,” and Lithium and Invega and Lamictal” help the most, the doctor’s going to go with the latter three-drug combination (and the patient is going to request that as well). Of course, thinking about it, isn’t this what do for the treatment of asthma (combination treatment), or infections (multiple antibiotics), or high blood pressure (multiple agents with an anti-fat chaser)? Other medical disciplines are using the same approach very effectively.

The unspoken question or tacit assumption when psychiatric meds are being challenged, is that these meds are being used for “how someone feels, like giving them drugs or something, like pain relievers,” that somehow psychiatric illnesses aren’t “real” illnesses. (We continue to fight the ignorance and stigma of mental illness today!) ALL of the research on the major psychiatric diagnoses PROVES that these illnesses derive from observable changes in brain chemistry and anatomy.