I had actually seen the medicated child before in an undergrad clinical psych course, and it was interesting to watch again now as my stance on psychotropic medications has changed. The first time I watched the documentary, I was 100% anti-young kids taking ADHD medication. Something about the combination of the pharmaceutical push and sinister marketing, the fact that inattention and hyperactivity are just characteristics of young children, and the sense that many kids medicated for ADHD are medicated to benefit their parents/because their parents think they need it and the decision is not done in conversation with the kid really put me off it. It was really a self determination question for me. Now, I still think all those things are true, but having heard more and more from adults with ADHD who wish they had been diagnosed and medicated as children my opinion is more cloudy. I still have a hard time being 100% all for it, because who are we to say what a kid "needs"? Is a child having improved grades and getting in trouble at school less a justification for medicating them? Why is this the ideal, because it's easier to manage kids when they behave the way we want them to? But then I also think of that statistic about youth/teen suicide about how there's a correlation with getting in trouble at school/disproportionate punishment and I can't help but think maybe if those kids who were constantly being punished in school were medicated for some underlying problem, what would be different? Are children able to articulate their unhappiness with their behavior effectively enough to indicate they need or don't need medication? It just kind of feels like medicating kids for ADHD should be such a specialized thing, like some sort of mental health/executive function specialist should work with a kid to figure it out, it shouldn't just be a script written by any old doctor. But then on the other hand if medicating kids is what's going to keep them alive, it SHOULD be accessible!!!