Psychiatrists are harming children by giving them adult drugs even when it is not clear that they will develop the adult maladies for which the drugs are designed. Giving children these at a young age often means they end up with a "life sentence" of being drugged out. So argues Peter Breggin at the Huffington Post:

From now on, Max, his family and his doctors will almost certainly have to face an increasingly impossible dilemma common to children who are prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs for a period of years. When trying to withdraw these children from multiple psychiatric medications, they almost certainly go through severe withdrawal problems with extreme emotional instability and the risk of worsening violence and suicidality. In fact, we are told that an attempt to take Max off his medications resulted in his displaying hallucinations and delusions, which Newsweek attributes to his worsening condition and his need for drugs.

Breggin points out that often the problem is that the parents need to learn to be better parents -- the child needs stability to learn behavioral norms. It would appear that there is a crowding out effect as the treatment possibilities are focused on what could be wrong with the child. The longer the child is subjected to harsh medicines, the less able the child is to develop a healthy mind and thus the parents ability to control the child without medications becomes even more diminished. The medicines put the child on a path which can only involve more medication.

/KDR