The newest report from the Trump administration’s Make America Wholesome Once more (MAHA) Fee, led by Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is, as soon as once more, riddled with errors, together with the miscitation of an grownup examine used to argue that American kids are “extremely medicated.”
The newest model of the report, up to date Friday, corrected a few of the unique errors. Nonetheless, NOTUS reported that it once more misrepresented research and distorted analysis to make unsupported claims, together with medicating kids.
In a piece titled “American kids are extremely medicated — and it is not working,” the MAHA Fee claimed psychotherapy is more practical than remedy for treating kids’s psychological well being points. To help the declare, the report cited a examine by famend psychologist Pim Cuijpers. Nonetheless, Cuijpers instructed NOTUS that his analysis targeted completely on psychiatric drugs in adults.
“Therapies of despair in adolescents have a really completely different efficacy than remedies in adults, so that they can’t be in contrast, and this reference is due to this fact not usable in adolescents,” Cuijpers clarified. “It additionally fails to state that the mix of remedy and antidepressants is superior to remedy or antidepressants alone.”
Cuijpers added that the report’s declare that “antidepressant prescription charges in teenagers elevated 14-fold between 1987 and 2014” was a “unusual” assertion.
“Fashionable antidepressants had been developed within the late Eighties. So it will also be mentioned that these medicine had been merely used for adolescents who may benefit from them,” Cuijpers instructed NOTUS.
Final week, the Trump administration defended the preliminary model of the 73-page report, calling it a “transformative” achievement, even if it cited a number of research that don’t exist.
For instance, the report claimed “American kids are on an excessive amount of drugs” and cited a examine supposedly authored by pediatric pulmonologist Dr. Harold J. Farber. However Farber denied writing the report, noting that whereas he’s conducting related analysis, its findings had been misrepresented.
Initially printed on Latin Instances
