Behavioral Drug Use In Toddlers Up Sharply: This report confirms many people’s concerns. As a psychiatrist and the father of two young children, let me add my voice to theirs. I’m not as upset as many that the effect of the medications in subjects this young hasn’t been tested. What troubles me immensely is how in the world anyone could be so confident that a toddler’s overactivity, poor impulse control, or mood instability are pathological. And, if they are, isn’t that what parental nurturance and containment are for? And if the parental influence is lacking, how obscene is it to think that a medication can compensate? I have written and taught about “ADHD” since I was a medical student, and in my view the more popular it has become, the less and less meaning the diagnosis has come to have, and the more and more overused it is. To our children’s peril, and our society’s. Update: Dr. H Klasen writes in the current issue of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry on “The Medicalization of Hyperactivity.”