I don't think that is what is going on with children being put on Ritalin and antidepressants (A/d's wouldn't exactly treat whatever is troubling her - they're just drugs designed to make you feel better). The overmedication is being promoted as opposed to a genuine response to a need.

I got put in front of behavioral pathologists as early as 4 years old. I never got a chance to be normal. As a result of that, I went years thinking I had "Asperger's Syndrome" - a disorder that is not even in the DSM anymore. Even if there obviously is legitimate mental illness, there is also an obvious phenomenon of children being pathologized by adults because the adults see something beneficial in it. 

The cure for this is really simple - pass regulations against advertising by pharmaceutical companies. If you do that, mental health treatment would be a more community-centered affair instead of big business.

I still think that the standard thinking on mental illness is something we need to get away from - medication, with all the dangers it provides, should really only be reached out for when there is a serious physical problem. Empathy, human bonding - this is what many of our most troubled people really need. No drug will ever provide that. Medicine is for curing diseases - drugs just disable people.

A mental disorder is what the girl in the New York Times article you posted allegedly has. The article evidences her having imaginary friends as a sign of schizophrenia - that would make most little kids schizophrenic - I knew alot of kids that did weird stuff like playing with toys of fictional characters and scary stuff like make noises of the fictional characters they were playing with. I thought they were just having fun but I guess I'm wrong - they all had a chemical imbalance that made them imagine things that weren't there, right? Maybe we should sell Seroquel at Toys R Us or have mental health screenings at FAO Schwartz!

Kids actually act up for many reasons. One's emotional responses could be the result of alot of factors going on in a child's social environment. It is very possible, with our current mentality, for a child who is responding to a toxic/bad social environment around them to get stigmatized with having an emotional disorder for what is really objectively normal behavior. Of course, it's alot easier for my parents' generation to blame their emotional problems on their children.

The whole mentality is totally from a parental and school point of view - maybe it would be good if we looked at the child's point of view, for once. They are human, you know, and we have no right to just have our way with them.