The documentary focuses on the increased prescription of stimulants such as Ritalin in children. It evaluates the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and teenagers via prescription of antipsychotic and antidepressant medications. Therefore, the Frontline documentary is extremely inspiring given the alarming number of children being medicated for psychiatric disorders. Although the program did not mention any alternative approaches to diagnose this disorder, I think the prescription of antipsychotic and antidepressant medications is the conventional solution for children suffering from behavioral problems.
A major issue in the Frontline program is that many children who were diagnosed with ADHD before are currently regarded as bipolar. This is after noting the similarities in the symptoms in both disorders, which has increased interest to diagnose children suffering from bipolar by prescribing appropriate medications. However, this can cause further complications when children tend to be diagnosed without proper testing. Since the side effects are still not known to prescribe this diagnosis can have disastrous effects on the children who are still in the development stage.
The most interesting issue raised in the documentary is the legislative regulation that was enacted during the Clinton administration (Frontline 2008). Pharmaceutical companies were offered an incentive to perform pediatric testing on these behavioral problems. This would help reduce the changes of prescribing wrong diagnosis, but they focused on maximizing profit at the expense of vulnerable children.
The entire problem with the program is that it focused on symptoms without focusing on the root cause of the disorder. Since this disorder could be due to parental eating behavior, I would suggest parent to improve their eating habits that will reduce behavioral disorder among their children. Parents are supposed to take complete responsibility of children via making better eating habits, choices that will make a huge change in a child's behavior. This will reduce these behavior disorders and prevent children from becoming experimenting objects.
References
Frontline (2008, January 8). Watch The Full Program | The Medicated Child | FRONTLINE | PBS [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/view/
