In the US, an increasing number of parents are turning to psychoactive medication to help them cope with the challenging behaviour of their children. So is this an understandable path to take, or a worrying shortcut, asks Louis Theroux.

On a kitchen countertop in their suburban Pittsburgh home the Kelley family keep a small collection of pill bottles.

They jokingly refer to is as “Hugh’s personal pharmacy”.

Hugh, aged 10, appears basically normal – a dark-haired kid who goes to a mainstream school and speaks and interacts well, albeit sometimes in a slightly aloof and off-hand way. Yet he has been diagnosed with a range of mental disorders and put on a battery of medications.

‘It’s very troubling’

He takes Adderall for his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Tenex for impulsiveness. And for his bipolar disorder he is on a heavy dose of a powerful anti-psychotic called Seroquel – in an “off-label” prescription, meaning it hasn’t been tested on children.

“It’s very troubling,” Hugh’s mother Barbro told me when I asked about his reliance on the medication. “The problem with it is, if you continue not to medicate with something for bipolar disorder in a child, the highs and the lows, the cycles get worse and worse.”

I was there for a documentary about the growing number of children who depend on psychoactive drugs to regulate their behaviour, basing myself at one of America’s top hospitals for children’s psychiatric issues, Pittsburgh’s Western Psychiatric Institute. … Continue reading