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SC Kristin Maguire's avatar

Thank you for the informed update on "research" into psychiatric treatments for minors. It is discouraging that our culture and the medical community seems unwilling to look for the underlying causes of anxiety and depression in our youth. The great experiment of children entering daycare at six weeks of age rolls on without investigation.

How useful and reliable is the "CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey" for accurate data? Its results are presented as the gold standard (no pun intended) for understanding the behaviors and well-being of young people. Self-reporting by teenagers while sitting in a high school classroom with their peers doesn't seem to be clinically rigorous.

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Y Rabinovitz's avatar

The CDC is certainly not the gold standard for this or most likely anything, but it's possibly the best nationwide snapshot available. We can also look at the numbers of children (down to the age of 2) on psychiatric drugs and be similarly horrified. Daycare from the age of 6 weeks is a tragedy but for many families, the mothers need to go back to work. The U.S. needs to fundamentally change the emphasis it places on family life. Has anyone with real power spoken up on this?

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SC Kristin Maguire's avatar

More than 20 years ago I was horrified when I read the questions of the CDC YRBS. Sexual and substance use questions were asked that introduced topics to young people. Parents weren't informed before the students participated in the survey because, "If students are opted out the data set will be incomplete." Surely, an ethical problem. The "researchers" then presented the results as absolute truth without caveats regarding self-reporting by teens in order to push for greater interventions with Yong people.

In the late 90s, some longitudinal cognitive and behavioral studies were conducted to investigate the impact of 3 and 4K. They were brushed aside because of the need for universal full day daycare to financially help families. It didn't matter whether "gains" were temporary or permanent or what psychological or behaviors later in life were. The train had left the station.

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