The two month consultation period for the new NICE guideline on psychosis and schizophrenia in children and young people has now begun.
You must be registered as a stakeholder to comment on the guideline and you have until 27th September 2012 to make your views known.
The guideline is aimed at clinicians and service commissioners in providing and planning high-quality care for children and young people with psychosis and schizophrenia. It stresses the importance of the experience of care for children and young people with psychosis and schizophrenia and their carers.
The guideline aims to:
- Improve access and engagement with treatment and services for children and young people with psychosis and schizophrenia
- Evaluate the role of specific psychological and psychosocial interventions in the treatment of psychosis and schizophrenia in children and young people
- Evaluate the role of specific pharmacological interventions in the treatment of psychosis and schizophrenia in children and young people
- Evaluate the role of specific service-level interventions for children and young people with psychosis and schizophrenia
- Integrate the above to provide best-practice advice on the care of children and young people throughout the course of their psychosis and schizophrenia
- Promote the implementation of best clinical practice through the development of recommendations tailored to the requirements of the NHS in England and Wales.
Links
Psychosis and schizophrenia in children and young people: draft for consultation (PDF). NICE, 9 Aug 2012.
Psychosis and schizophrenia in children and young people: guideline consultation website.
This is alarming – are we going the same way as the United States, and leaving Pharmaceutical Companies wringing their hands in glee? Why are we do intent on labelling and pathologising issues affecting young people and children? I have no doubt that some young people (usually adolescents from late teenage years) can develop psychosis, but we are still looking at a very low number within our societies.
Children and young people today face many difficulties but to give them a psychiatric diagnosis is morally wrong. We have children as young as 3 years old being diagnosed and treated for psychiatric disorders and medicated with the same medications as we give adults. Society needs to wake up! We need to look at the issues that face today’s families and give them support, not drugs and labels. A multi-million dollar llaw suit against pharmaceutical companies is a ‘drop in the ocean’ to them. They are the wolves waiting to pounce on a vulnerable population group and on families who accept the word of prescribing doctors.