Covid-19 has wrought havoc on almost every area of life. And for many parents and students, remote learning has proven to be a mighty challenge to face for a multitude of reasons. Many parents are reaching for ADHD diagnosis and drugs to help manage remote learning, according to a recent NBC news article.
But how did we get here? What are the long-term effects of this on our children? How can we combat it safely?
Here is what Dr. Teralyn Sell, psychotherapist and brain health expert, has to say:
“Early on in the pandemic, it was stated that our response to the pandemic should not be worse in outcomes than the pandemic itself. Unfortunately, the only marker has been infection and death. We didn’t put a marker of deteriorating mental health, and we should have.”
“In my opinion, it is safe to say that our response to the pandemic is actually worse than the pandemic itself and here’s why…”
“Fast forward almost a year and our collective mental health has worsened to the point of increased completed suicides in our teens and young adults increased psychiatric medication prescriptions and an overflow of mental health clinician caseloads due to anxiety and depression. Our already broken mental health system is taxed to the max and nobody is looking for the real solution. In a society that cites depression as the leading cause of disability within the next 10 years, our lawmakers (local, state and federal) have remained scared of liability to the point of inaction or even paralysis.”
“Then, an article pops on my timeline that says, ‘The Great attention deficit: More parents seek ADHD diagnosis and drugs for kids to manage remote learning’. I literally gasped when I read this. I gasped because we have reached a threshold and have successfully imploded. We are so desperate and worried about the education of our children (during a pandemic) that we are willing to take them to a doctor to help them focus on a screen for hours. Interesting because only a year ago we have researched screen time to be negative, bad and contributing to lack of focus and attention and other mental health-related issues, but yet we now have an expectation that as long as it’s for learning it is ok.
“Guess what? Our kids are not learning, they are not growing, they are desperate for adults around them to step up and advocate for them, not by throwing medication at them so they can comply, but to really stand up and say ‘ENOUGH’!”
“Instead of fixing the problem, our kids need to go back to school not just to learn but to learn to be part of something bigger. We have been inundated by pharmaceutical companies that promote the only way our kids’ mental health can be solved is by prescribing stimulants so they can keep their faces in zoom meetings all day. We are creating more mental health problems by overprescribing psychiatric medications to make sure our kids can cope with the stress created by the adults around them.”
“By doing this we are successfully creating long-term mental health problems in our youth by avoiding the real issues in lieu of medication. The research is clear, long-term use of psychiatric medications is damaging to the brain and the body and here we are handing out prescriptions like it is candy. What we are creating is long-term consumers to Big Pharma who are dependent on medication to handle emotions.”
“I’m not a researcher, but I’m pretty certain even the CDC has said that children are not even in the high-risk population for COVID and yet they are relegated to confinement in their own homes with stressed-out parents and wrung out educators trying to keep a zoom classroom going for almost and the entire year. It seems a little bit like solitary confinement of an inmate, doesn’t it? Research shows that solitary confinement is detrimental to an inmate’s health and wellness and there are laws around that. But, not this. Nope. Let’s medicate them instead.”
“One might argue, but what are the alternatives?”
“The solution is right in front of us…. socialization, friendships, learning, growing, arts, athletics, music and other enriching activities found in school across the country. The solution is within each and every adult that stands by in neutral and does nothing to help.”
“Mental well-being has been well researched to be multifaceted. Socialization, nutrition, exercise, meditation and most importantly connection are all part of the equation. Where does most of this occur for our children, within a school, not within a zoom call.”