Good Essay On OBS Frontline: The Medicated Child Blog

The documentary OBS Frontline: The Medicated Child examines the dramatic increase in the number of children who are being diagnosed with serious mental disorders and how these children are prescribed medications that are not aimed at treating their conditions but whose viability is being tested on them. The documentary follows the lives of four families living in Denver, Colorado. The documentary shows how children from these families grapple with their conditions, their examination as well as how pharmaceutical companies, doctors and advocacy groups are involved in this web.
The sociological concept that will be used to analyze the documentary is ‘medicalization’ which is the conditions of children are defined and treated as a subject of medical study. It is apparent that the psychiatric problems of children are being defined and treated by physicians who are merely testing the viability of medicines. Also, the concept of approaches to medical care used on them serves the interests of psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies and not the children and their families. These approaches involve the degree of involvement of different stakeholders in the provision of medical care
Children are given medicine not because they will get better or recover, but because doctors want to see whether they can recover. It becomes clear that doctors and pharmaceutical companies function as a cartel whereby there is a lot of or exaggerated diagnosis of psychiatric diseases among children, and this is meant to serve as a fertile ground that will identify as many children as possible so that these drugs are tested on them. The documentary opens a window into the study of this phenomenon that is troubling.
The documentary is worth watching because it gives insights into what goes on in medical circles especially when it comes to the diagnosis of psychiatric conditions in children. Each child’s profile is unique, and the psychiatric opinions given determine the form of treatment they receive. And it is the treatment offered that is questionable, and everybody needs to know this before they rush to giving their children any prescribed medicines.