Anywhere else, her revelation might have been a bombshell. But no one flinched when a child psychiatrist told a conference of parents and counselors last month that she had prescribed antidepressants to children as young as 3-1/2.
Audience members at the San Diego conference, after all, were quite familiar with the concept of preschoolers on Prozac. Many of the parents in the audience have children who suffer from a debilitating form of shyness called selective mutism, one of a handful of mental disorders thought to strike children younger than 6. And several had put their kids on the drugs despite their misgivings and well-publicized concerns about the effects of antidepressants upon teenagers. We are fucking up big time, to allow our kids to be put on meds rather than deal with the sources of their anxieties.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62154,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2