The Trip Treatment for Kids is Coming Sooner Than You Think

Kids may be prescribed psychedelics sooner than you think.

As MDMA and psilocybin move towards final rounds of clinical trials, the organizations that are conducting these studies will be tasked with showing these substances safety in children. According to Plant Parenthood’s recent conversation with Rick Doblin from MAPS, the FDA has indicated that they will require MDMA testing on children prior to the drug’s approval.

This would not be the first time psychedelics have been tested on children, though. Several studies of ketamine’s effectiveness are already underway with participants as young as six. And as early as 1959, we can find references to children being treated with LSD (with promising results).

While we might balk at the idea of children tripping on acid, let’s examine the current state of mental health treatment for kids. The most common mental health diagnoses for children are ADHD, behavior problems, anxiety, and depression. The Centers for Disease Control reports that a staggering 9.4% of children aged 2–17 years have received an ADHD diagnosis. That is more than 6 million children. A full 62% of them took medication for it; these medications are stimulants that can cause side effects like sleep problems, decreased appetite, delayed growth, headaches and stomachaches and moodiness and irritability.

Dr. Nicole Brown at Johns Hopkins University found that children diagnosed with ADHD also experienced markedly higher levels of adversity and trauma in the home, and that children who had experienced four or more of these events were three times more likely to use ADHD medication. In other words, much of what is diagnosed and medicated as ADHD is, in fact, a trauma response.

Stimulants are no way to treat trauma, and, for many of these children, the drugs are not effective. They may also camouflage symptoms, which are important indicators for anyone treating the child to understand in order to help them and measure their progress. If trauma response symptoms improve, it means that the child is processing and integrating the events in a healthier way.

For children taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for anxiety or depression, the side effects are also problematic, include insomnia, anxiety, nausea, diarrhea, fatigue and dizziness. And for a small number of children taking antidepressants, severe side effects can include suicidal thinking or behavior. Girls in the foster care system — who are disproportionately Black — are particularly susceptible to misdiagnosis and over-prescription of these medications. A 2014 report found that psychotropic medications were prescribed to them at rates nine times higher than other children.

Of course, some children may benefit from taking these medications. When diagnosed and medicated properly, they may find enormous relief and a far better quality of life. But just how many of these children are being treated for a symptom that represents an underlying problem — trauma — is unknown.

The challenge with childhood trauma is that it is often perpetuated by the child’s caregivers. Removing the child from the caregivers may only create further trauma. And no amount of any medication, including psychedelics, can help a child whose caregivers are unsafe for them.

However, for children who are properly diagnosed, a different option –one with fewer side effects, that does not need to be administered daily and that may help address trauma rather than cover up its corresponding symptoms — could offer far more healing. More information is needed to understand how children might respond to these substances and whether the mental health benefits outweigh the risks. For now, we can draw from a small amount of Western research on children, an increasing amount of positive outcomes for adults and anthropological studies on Indigenous traditions who use plant medicines ceremonially that psychedelics may provide a safe treatment for children who are suffering.