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The Drugging of Our Children
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The Drugging of Our Children

103 MIN · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]
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The DSM-IV lists excessive talking, fidgeting, and difficulty staying seated as symptoms of ADD and ADHD, and on that basis doctors across the country write prescriptions for Ritalin and Prozac, sometimes for children as young as two to four. Filmmaker Gary Null examines how that diagnosis gets made, usually from teacher checklists and parent impressions rather than any medical test, with little room left for other explanations like diet or home environment. Doctors and former patients describe the side effects rarely mentioned at the prescribing stage: insomnia, loss of appetite, facial tics, headaches, psychotic symptoms, and in rare cases fatal cardiac arrhythmia. The film's sharpest claim is institutional: schools coordinating with family courts to pressure parents who refuse medication, threatening custody loss and foster placement for noncompliance. Null frames the practice as a collision between an under-tested diagnosis, an industry with every incentive to expand it, and parents caught between a school system's demands and their own doubts about what's actually wrong with their child.