How are large drug companies benefiting from the latest trend of selling powerful psychoactive drugs to America’s children? Do these drugs really help our children cure symptoms of supposed mental illness, or do they tend to increase depression, violence, and suicide? Are we really treating the root causes of mental illness, or are we just eliminating annoying symptoms?

This feature-length documentary examines the alarming growth in the prescription of powerful psychotropic drugs for adolescents and children. This documentary covers the national tragedy of Columbine and focuses on the largely unknown fact that teenage shooter Eric Harris was on the psychotropic drug Luvox at the time he and Dylan Klebold took the lives of 13 other students at their high school. Violence and aggression, precipitated by prescribed drug use, is also explored in an unprecedented discussion between Mark Taylor, the first shooting victim in the Columbine tragedy, and Cory Baadsgard, a teenager on Paxil and Effexor who, in another violent incident, took his teacher and 23 students hostage at gunpoint in his Washington high school. The film proceeds to show the dangerous links between psychotropic drugs like Paxil, Luvox, Effexor and Prozac – commonly prescribed to adolescents for anxiety, depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – and the increased incidents of violence, suicide and psychotic behavior often observed in those children and adolescents who are taking the drugs. The film also presents compelling personal accounts, including a mother going to prison and losing her son to government authorities because she refused to give her son psychiatric drugs. We also ask some of the leading medical authorities and mental health professionals to tell us the unvarnished truth about current increased diagnoses of recently devised mental illnesses and the unprecedented prescription of a host of very powerful psychoactive drugs to “treat” them. Finally, this documentary explores safer, alternative methods for treating childhood mental illness.

This is a compelling, beautifully edited documentary from award-winning filmmaker Gary Null. It that has both a dramatic and important educational impact.

Director: Gary Null

The Drugging of Our Children home: www.garynull.com

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