Spare The Rod And ...

And quite a number of these children are similarly far too young for the 'rod.' Pharmac records suggest thousands of prescriptions a year are being written for children under 10 ... For children and adolescents, it said, the risk of suicidal ideas and behaviour from newer antidepressants called selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) generally outweighed their benefits.
Older "tricyclic" antidepressants were not generally recommended for those under 18 because of the risk of heart problems.Causing most alarm are the figures for babies, even though they dropped sharply during the three years.
For one-year-olds, 768 prescriptions were written in 2004-05, down to 24 by last year. For those under one, there were 453 prescriptions in 2004-05 but only nine last year.
The numbers also declined for every other age group under 10, but each group remained in the hundreds last year.
The reduction in such prescriptions is good .. that they still occurr in the hundreds for most age groups uder ten is a cause of grave concern.

Organics Is Not Entirely Natural.

Hawkes Bay Hospital has never been so full, with unprecedented demand for beds leaving some patients to be treated on beds in the corridors ... but this of course is not a true statement ... every year it happens and increasingly as organic pip fruit orcharding takes a greater hold, more than 50% of orchards now and the predominant spray is lime sulfur a respiratory irritant, mimics viral, flu like symptoms ... the old acid rain you know... and you can smell it in some of the wards ... because gases cannot be contained.

Mandatory screening of every infant proposed

Our Childrens' Commissioner wants, 'mandatory screening of every baby's home life in a bid to halve New Zealand's high child murder rate.'

Now this is really something like imposing on the many to better control the few ... and the basis for this ... Researcher Janet Fanslow says, 'home visitation is one of the only proven methods to reduce the child abuse rate. Parenting programmes also worked, but to a lesser extent.'

Perhaps I have missed something here, but I am sure a considerable number of children abused and killed over the years have been under CYF's supervision and/or care.

In addition there are always greater efficiencies to be made by targetting resources to where the problem is.

Surely this overinclusion isn't simply an endeavour to preserve a PC perspective?

Visual Pollution.

Just goes to show that even those in the medical profession have Adlerian strivings when it comes to public recognition.

"There are many school students who will walk past it. I am a doctor and in the past 18 years I have treated a lot of bulimic and anorexic girls. That advertising is destructive to their rehabilitation," she said.

There was a time when anorexia was an 'illness' that afflicted 1 in 150,000 and the diagnosis included bulimia - so there would have been only one person so afflicted in the HB ... my, how times have changed ... & it is this sort of over inclusive, emotive, exaggerated vulnerability/exaggerated simplistic notion of cause of relapse that perpetuates this movement of increasingly defining normals as abnormals, of increasing dependence on professionals in the pursuit of narrowing of the range of 'acceptable' behaviour.

Silly stuff from someone who should know better.