From 1994 to 2001 the prescription of drugs for adolescent mental illness rose an amazing sixty percent. This is a trend I have watched over my years as a therapist. There has been an increasing reliance on medications to treat numerous behavioral symptoms presented by children. In an article recently published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, the authors suggest that the majority of psychotropic drugs prescribed to children have not been tested for specific use with children. These are adult drugs being used to treat childhood issues. The authors also suggested that many of these drugs have only shown limited short-term benefits in use with adults, but as a practitioner I am seeing these medicines prescribed for two and three years at a time. There has been little to no research examining the impact of such long-term use on the growth and development of the children using the medicines. I should be clear that I believe there are times for the use of psychotropic medicines...