‘Doing your best to stay up with current events can often feel like drowning in a torrent of never ending bad news. With information coming at you in every direction, it’s easy to get burned out. Compassion and solidarity are important, but being an informed citizen doesn’t mean you always have to go down with the ship…’

Source: Lifehacker

Experts baffled to learn that 2 years olds are being prescribed psychiatric drugs

‘In 2014, US doctors wrote ~20,000 prescriptions for risperidone, quetiapine and other antipsychotics for children under the age of two; a cohort on whom these drugs have never been tested and for whom there is no on-label usage. The NYT spoke to “a dozen experts in child psychiatry and neurology” and not one of them could explain why anyone would prescribe these meds to small children. Some hypothesized that the drugs were actually intended for an uninsured or underinsured parent, but at least some parents report visiting their family doctors for help with toddlers’ tantrums, sleep problem or lethargy and coming out with a scrip for powerful antipsychotic meds that caused disturbing side-effects in their kids. They say that their doctors didn’t warn them of these effects, nor advise them that the use was untested.’

Source: Boing Boing