Checking babies for mental disorders

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Discuss: Diagnosing babies with mental disorders:

http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/threa ... PDelay%3d1

Doctors checking babies for mental disorders:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18660812/wi ... ?GT1=10008

I think if they can get it right then it would be useful for both the child and the parents to be aware of it as early as possible. But I don't see how you can diagnose someone that young.

This will just lead to autistic babies getting abandoned, put up for adoption or beaten before they are old enough to even be able to hide from their abuser. It may also cause normal kids to get mis-labeled. There's no treatment for autism, once you have it you have it for life, so I found that part of the article ridiculous.

I can already foresee the money-hungry pharmaceutical industry taking advantage of this by pushing drugs on younger and younger children. It's bad enough when school aged kids are given medications that aren't FDA approved for use in people under 18, but I'm sure babies are next.

Miranda, good point.

Everyone's input is appreciated.

Now.. Notice that mental disorders and autism is becoming more popular. As you can see, it is showing its popularity, really. The way society can find the effort to help people differently somehow is not inherant in society. Early intervention is to ensure more diagnoses. Expanding the authority over diagnoses is what constitutes more research and "cure" seeking for this "horrific epidemic" called autism. Its a thrill for the media and its another databank stastic for the governments health office. Its something that the eye of the drug corporations can have to follow their high-tech seeking strategies and to support their experiaments of new potent bio-chemical weapons to cure those nasty "symptoms" that everyone has ever fore-told.

The same goes for stuff like teenscreen. What more could we have here?

But there already are victims of psychiatry from the early nineties up till these days. I'm not talking about ECT or institutionalization but I'm saying this to the subject of the medicine curebies because pharmaceuticals have taken a big turn around in their usage for a very vast continuum of disorders.

I also thought that autism was only valid in the branch of neurlogy too. In spite of that, however, isn't this a mental disorder thing in the DSM? Especially because A.D.D and autism are usually co-morbid.

Another thing: I also wonder if people will start to think of what it matters how much junk they put in their body from now on. Sometimes I get angry and think that medicine should be for everyone since its been unjust in its preservation for only "the mentally ill" to take it.

If they can help kids with early intervention before they even know there is something different about them, I am for it. However, if they use it as an excuse merely for medicating them, then I am against it. I was erroneously diagnosed as hyperactive when I was five and given a medication I didn't need.

9CatMom wrote:
>I was erroneously diagnosed as hyperactive when I was five and given a medication I didn't need.

Re: that probably has happened to many of us, mildly, but we don't want to discuss it with people that we do not know. Thanks for speaking your mind anyways.

One possible explaination for this autism epidemic is more diagnoses. But I also think that it might be that some kind of toxin at a very low concentration could be altering their brains' developement or gene expression. Either that or that there may be a high mutation rate going awry for the part of the genome that mutates for our brains' variation in neurological traits.

There is mutation rate for our DNA and I think high activity in mutation in some parts than others in the DNA segments. There is also a mutation rate for the Mitochondria.

The thing that I find worrying about this kind of thing is them using it to decide the beings that are born and those that are not. Needless to say, this looks iffy to my eyes.

I'm going to be boozing again and won't sleep very well because I worry about all those babies. I can't comprehend how humiliated they must feel being diagnosed and stuff.

I think its great. And I don't think it will lead to a rash of abondonment or abuse either. Labels can help people understand. I'm trained in screening infants and toddlers for possible developmental delays. There is a comprehensive checklist you go over when you asses a baby and if the baby seems like he or she might have a problem then they would be refered for a more thourough testing. Most parents are going to want to do whatever they can to help their children develope normally and live well and easily in the wide world. The earlier intervention occurs, the better. But no one is going to give a two year old medication because of things like Autism (unless that child is also at risk for having seizures in which case of course they would be given meds to prevent siezures). I don't think medication would even work for these kids. What they need is work on those areas they are having trouble with so by the time pre k or kindergarden rolls around they might be able to participate in a normal classroom or something like that (with appropriate help and accommodations if needed).