Kids Caught in the Psychiatric Maelstrom

Betsy Root, more formally known as Elizabeth, earned her Master of Social Work degree at Syracuse University. She has been a licensed clinical social worker over 18 years.

Over those years, her employment spanned five upstate New York counties, where she served families and children in community mental health clinics. She also specialized in the field of substance abuse, which enhanced her effectiveness in helping families. Betsy also holds a Master of Science in Education. She taught briefly in the Ithaca and Syracuse public schools before deciding to switch careers.

Early in the 21st Century, Betsy became increasingly concerned about the labeling and medicating of children. When bipolar burgeoned as a new diagnosis, the drugs prescribed to kids multiplied. Many children received three, four, or more psychotropic drugs every day. Betsy noticed that many of them deteriorated on these regimens; many became chronically mentally ill. Betsy didn’t believe most of them were ill at all when they first presented at the clinic. They were troubled, and for good reasons. Many had been subjected to various types of adverse experiences. Other children had no trauma in their histories, but suffered because of unique personalities or difficult temperaments—not indications of mental illness.

Always one to keep abreast of changes in her field, Betsy’s research accelerated in step with her concerns. She learned why “brain disease” became such a focus in the 1990s. Congress declared those years the “decade of the brain.” While previously treatment consisted of counseling or talk therapy to identify and ameliorate sources of distress, now it became a matter of labeling and medicating. This seemingly quick approach really pleased insurance companies. Their managed care “specialists” increasingly made reimbursement for services contingent upon psychiatric referrals, regardless of providers’ chosen treatment plans. Such referrals nearly always resulted in prescribed drugs such as psychostimulants, antipsychotics, antidepressants, sedatives, and “mood stabilizers.” Many children got all of these, in succession or simultaneously.

So early in the 21st Century Betsy started to write a book to educate people about a mental health system that she was convinced was doing more harm to children than good. She witnessed lack of knowledge everywhere; from other mental health professionals, to educators, to family court judges, to social service case workers, to lawmakers. By 2007, Betsy had accumulated volumes of information about a broken system, how to fix it, and how to help children without drugs. She retired from practice and set to work completing her encyclopedic critique of America’s mental health treatment of children. Kids Caught in the Psychiatric Maelstrom: How Pathological Labels and “Therapeutic” Drugs Hurt Children and Families was published in September of 2009.