Abstract
It is possible that the most powerful “drug” in childhood management is the emotionally warm, reality orientated and consistently predictable parent. Such a concept can be exitended to the doctor or any other professional worker who is perceived to have similar qualities by his patients (Balint 1961). Against this, when psychoactive drugs are prescribed for children, one has to evaluate their varying pharmacological effects. This includes placebo and side effects which themselves may have a dynamic interaction and facilitate or retard behavioural changes in the child and attitudes in the parent. Generally child psychiatrists are reluctant to exhibit drugs in the first instance as all too frequently by the time a child is referred there is a history of multiple drug failure. It is believed that for this reason drugs may be underor over-valued and that the indications for their use are not yet well established. Yet it is the clinical experience of most professional workers in this field that drugs exert both powerful and specific effects and should be included in the therpeutic armamentarium.
This study attempts to assess the symptoms, traits and behaviour of a sample of disturbed children over a specified period during which they were given a sequence of psychoactive drugs, a placebo and a no-drug period. An attempt was made at the same time to assess the observable dynamics of the parent-child interaction and the probable relationship this has to the effects of psychoactive drugs.