Two weeks ago; Dylan Bradshaw, an Irvine teen who attended Northwood High School, died after football practice. Several months previously another athlete, fourteen-year old Megan Myers, died during a cross country race. Whenever I hear these stories, I can’t help but wonder if these teens were ever prescribed medications for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder and could it have been a factor in their deaths.

Medications such as Ritalin and Adderall are stimulants used in the treatment of behavioral disorders like ADD and ADHD. However, the recreational drug Cocaine, is a stimulant as well. Cocaine use has been determined to cause heart damage. Whenever adults; who are relatively young, experience heart problems, hospitals check to see if Cocaine abuse was a possible factor.

Therefore, if stimulants are known to cause heart damage, why are we prescribing them in abundance to young children? There have been no long term studies done about the effects of these drugs on developing bodies but these medications are prescribed everyday across America to children as young as three and four years old.

Why do parents do it? Desperation would be the foremost answer. When you’re told your child is being disruptive in class or not paying attention and therefore not living up to their potential you want to find a remedy. That remedy has always been medication.

Some parents swear these drugs have helped their children and feel they couldn’t possibly be successful in school without them. Others see damages, both psychologically and physically, to their child but are not aware of other alternatives.

These medications have side effects and children quite often need to take other medications to combat the negative behaviors that arise when they are in use. Therefore, they end up on a cocktail of drugs as a young child.

My son, for example, was prescribed Adderall XR when he was four years old for his ADHD. Because it made him highly emotional and caused tantrums, he was eventually put on Prozac and Risperdal as well.

It helped a little but certainly wasn’t the lottery ticket for him. He often slept in class or was zombie-like so this slowed his hyperactivity down but didn’t help his learning. He was still emotional when he became alert and when the Adderall wore off in the evening, his hyperactivity was out of control. He would run and bounce around, for no reason, until the sweat poured off his body.

When my son was eight-years old he told me, “Mom, my heart hurts.”I need to go to a hospital and see a doctor.” The doctor wasn’t aware of any side effects but she called the next day. She had promised to research the situation and discovered Adderall XR was banned in Canada due to heart failure in children. I decided it was time to take him off of the meds.

I eventually found a homeopathic alternative on the internet. He’s doing so much better behaviorally and health-wise now. However, since these type of natural remedies aren’t covered by insurance, it’s costly.

Because the price of these natural treatments can be prohibitive some parents are unwilling to stop the use of drugs such as Adderall XR. A friend of mine put her son on it after he was diagnosed with ADHD. He started having facial tics, a known side effect. Of course he was then prescribed another medication to combat the tics.

When I told her about the homeopathic treatment I was using, her first question was,”Is it covered by insurance?” When I told her it wasn’t, her response was, “Then forget it!”

These medications were prescribed to her son and mine by the same psychiatrist. Never at any point, in my son’s case, was his blood pressure taken or tests done to monitor his reaction to these drugs. I would say most children are not physically monitored while they are on these medications.

This leads to the question I posed at the beginning of the article. Were these young athletes ever prescribed medications, with possible damaging side effects, that eventually proved to be fatal?

Being young and athletic, Dylan Bradshaw and Megan Myers never would have been thought of as candidates for heart failure so why did they die? In Myers case, the conclusion was heart inflammation. The reason for Bradshaw’s death has not yet been released.

Photo by djloche

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