Should You Medicate Your Child's Mind?: A Child Psychiatrist Makes Sense of Whether to Give Kids Psychiatric Medication »

Elizabeth Roberts, MD, is a board-certified medical doctor specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. Roberts attended medical school as a single mother, raising three daughters, aged 8, 7 and 4, when she entered Rush Medical College. Today, Dr. Roberts is in both private practice and also medical director of a children's psychiatric emergency room in Southern California, and she has also conducted parenting seminars for the public through hospitals, high schools, and other organizations. Roberts has appeared on Oprah, ABC News and been featured in numerous publications, including the Chicago Tribune. She lives in Canyon Lake, Calif.

Millions of parents are facing whether to medicate their children for psychiatric disorders—from depression to ADHD to bipolar disorder. Now physician and psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Roberts explains the risks and benefits of medicating and not medicating children and demystifies and simplifies the process of separating psychiatric illness from the other more common behavioral patterns in children, particularly defiance, or willfulness.

Dr. Roberts clearly explains what she discusses every day with the parents of the hundreds of children she treats. How is a parent to know which behaviors are bio-chemical and which are simply the result of willfulness? When should a parent seek a child psychiatrist's help in medicating their child? How can you find a doctor you can trust? When is it more appropriate to use behavioral techniques? Roberts' insight will be invaluable in helping families wade through all the contradictory recommendations that the media, the Internet, teachers, relatives, friends and neighbors, and nonspecialist doctors provide.

Library Journal

What kind of information do parents want when deciding whether to give their child psychiatric medicine? Presumably, they are looking for timely, accessible advice from experts, which is just what these books provide (Kalikow and Roberts are both experienced child psychiatrists). In addition, they want information that is specific to their situation. Someone struggling with a hyperactive or aggressive child probably doesn't have the patience or the energy to read about the symptoms and treatments of depression. Roberts's book is better on this count, as it is arranged into chapters devoted to particular disorders and medications. Much of the same material is covered in Kalikow's guide, but it is scattered throughout the narrative. Indeed, Kalikow states that his goal is to illuminate the thought processes of a doctor as he makes choices about medication, not to list the uses and side effects of drugs. Yet it's nice to have something interesting to read, and Kalikow's book is definitely the livelier of the two, containing numerous anecdotes and a more in-depth look at the parents of one patient, "Rosie," as they struggle to decide how to help their anxious daughter. Neither book is a crucial purchase, though even the smallest libraries should have a few more specialized titles-at the minimum, one on childhood depression, one on anxiety disorders, and one on ADHD. For larger public libraries needing more material, these current titles are good supplementary works, with the Roberts book more likely to be checked out regularly.-Mary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, WA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.