Are antidepressants putting young lives and brains at risk for harm?

via The Conversation University of Sydney

"Brain development

Recent theories of antidepressant action have moved beyond the simplistic notion of “correcting a serotonin imbalance” to embrace the idea of “neurogenesis”: antidepressants stimulate growth and repair in depressed brains that have been damaged by chronic stress.

The idea is controversial but provides a clue to why these drugs may disagree with adolescents.

It’s now widely accepted that the human brain undergoes major developmental changes up to the age of 25.

The brain doesn't fully develop until the age of 25.

Antidepressants are likely suitable for a stressed, mature brain, but their neurogenic effects collide with brains that are still engaged in a frenzy of morphological transformation and therefore cause harm.

When antidepressants are given to adolescent lab rats, they create a “broken brain”, where normal development is disrupted and neurochemistry affected. This negatively impacts behaviour later in adulthood."

Read entire article HERE, and understand what I've been asking doctors for years regarding my daughter and the growing brain...the fact is, that her brain is STILL not the mature age 25 brain, and I DO believe it has been harmed by antidepressants and antipsychotics. Whether it will be permanent into the future ....only time can tell. Having to remember how to write, remember how to speak in sentences, count...