Curing the common child

Remember the days when kids were just weird, perhaps a tad hyperactive, or–imagine, for the sake of nostalgia–just being kids? Now, it seems, the typical little Johnny is mentally ill and in need of piles of pills for his "grab bag of mood disorders."

As much as I hate to side with the Scientologists on anything, this society's escalating obsession with mind-altering and a la carte prescription drugs is downright disturbing.

Is there no longer anything to be said for a culture in which being unhealthy is still taboo, personal and discreet, instead of something for even its youngest members to wear like a badge of (post-?) post-modern, world-weary communal hipness?

Granted, of course some kids are truly functionally impaired or pose threats to themselves or others–but it's tough to believe the prescription trend data that suggest in just ten years, five times more children have become genuinely psychotic.

Yet the pharmaceutical free-for-all is most definitely on. For instance, according to the first Times article linked to above, summer camps, now facing a "proliferation of children on stimulants for attention deficit disorder, antidepressants or antipsychotic drugs – or on cocktails of all three," plus prescription allergy medicines whose seasons sometimes overlap, are having to set up systems for dispensing drugs, sometimes turning to businesses that have sprung up to fill this privileged niche.

Some dispense campers' capsules at meal times, making it as much a part of the regular routine as macaroni art and "Kum-Ba-Ya:"

Many parents welcome the anonymity that comes when a lot of children take this, that or the other drug, so none stand out from the crowd.

"It's nobody's business who's taking what," said one parent of an Echo camper whose child is medicated for A.D.D. and who asked not to be named for privacy reasons. "It could be an allergy pill. The way they do it now, he feels comfortable. He just goes up with everybody else, gets it and then carries on with his day."

For when everyone's getting drugged, no one's precious self-esteem is threatened–just in case it and all other emotions haven't already smothered in a pharmacological haze.

Other camps prefer the infirmary, to provide more privacy. Camp Pontiac in Copake, N.Y., built a special medication wing with its own entrance and a porch where campers wait their turn.

Does this remind anyone else of the second "Adams Family" movie in which they sent Wednesday and Pugsley to camp, and they got tossed in the "Harmony Hut" until they emerged with negative attitudes inverted by sappy musicals and inspirational posters? How creepily Orwellian.

And I understand there are regulations and all, but if you're going to drug the little monkeys, shouldn't you also be teaching them to be responsible for their own, so allegedly vital medications? When I was younger, for several years I took a daily pill to prevent migraines. I didn't list it when I went on school trips because I didn't want to be branded as defective, nor did I fancy some scattered and inexpert chaperone playing gatekeeper where debilitating headaches were concerned. And, you know, I could be trusted not to suddenly swallow the whole bottle like they were delicious, if muted, Altoids.

Part of what's so irritating about this trend is that it seems to stem not so much from evidence-backed concerns over health and well-being–I don't know about contemporary campers, but myself and most of my cohorts managed to survive playing outside as children without an arsenal of antihistamines to defend against every other particle in the air–as from a desire for complete control and institutional reinforcement that everyone's choices are correct.

Take the recent uproar over the government-funded ad campaign touting breast-feeding by implying alternatives are risky and detrimental to babies' health. Its "negative framing" is making its point, but upsetting mothers who formula-feed. Apparently, even if the science says breast-feeding is healthier, to shield the self-esteem of all the validation-seeking mothers who opted for different methods, officials are supposed to hand everyone a figurative cookie and report in the same breath that not breast-feeding is just as well.

Though medicine has long been deemed both an art and a science, the classical humanities hold little sway relative to the vocal contemporary culture of entitlement and control freakdom when it comes to determining when and how to interfere with the inner machinery of body and mind.

And though scenes change and tones shift, classics tend to stay classic for a reason. And until someone invents a drug to combat "reckless procreation" or silence its wailing spawns, I'm holding my applause.