Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Are Kids overmedicated Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Are Kids overmedicated - Essay Example In this paper I will be attempting shade more light on the whole topic of overmedication in kids by answering the questions. There is evidence pointing at the fact that pediatricians are prescribing over ten million antibiotics for unnecessary cases e.g. common flu, asthma and even in some cases headache. The Centers for Disease Control also report that over ten thousand kids are on psychostimulant drugs such as Ritalin. It was estimated that approximately 7.5% of children in the United States in the age ranges of six years to seventeen were using medicines for behavior and emotional problems as at 2011. The number of children on psychostimulants has been rising sharply in the past few years. What this means is that there are many children out here receiving either antibiotics, drugs for behavioral problems or many others in large numbers that can be avoided. It points to an interesting fact; either the psychiatrists or medical doctors are overwhelmed or too busy to take enough time and provide quality service. It could also mean that parents are very busy give their children healthy home environments. Also schools must take a portion of the blame for their busy schedules that limit recess time or completely do not have activities for children to relax. Pharmaceutical companies should be blamed largely for the overmedication being reported in kids due to their marketing campaigns which are mostly driven by profitmaking (Insel, 2014). The consequences of overmedication can be devastating considering the health of these kids who are still growing. Overt and under-treatment are some of the consequences. Due to carelessness or clinicians being to busy, the children are subjected to medication even when conditions can be manage by therapy for instance in the case of psychostimulants. Antibiotic over or misuse may arise especially in situations where diagnosis is very uncertain e.g. in infections of the ears.

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Perception and Decision Making Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Perception and Decision Making - Essay Example Perception is defined on the Wikipedia as follows: "In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information." (Wikipedia, 2006b). It goes further explaining how perceptions are formed, how they change, and how there can be no perception at all. Let's see: "Many cognitive psychologists hold that, as we move about in the world, we create a model of how the world works. That is, we sense the objective world, but our sensations map to percepts, and these percepts are provisional, in the same sense that scientific hypotheses are provisional (cf. in the scientific method). As we acquire new information, our percepts shift. () Just as one object can give rise to multiple percepts, so an object may fail to give rise to any percept at all: if the percept has no grounding in a person's experience, the person may literally not perceive it." (Wikipedia, 2006b). "Decision making is the cognitive process of selecting a course of action from among multiple alternatives. Every decision-making produces a final choice. It can be an action or an opinion. It begins when we need to do something but we do not know what. Therefore decision-making is a reasoning process which can be rational or irrational, and can be based on explicit assumptions or tacit assumptions." (Wikipedia, 2006a). In the decision-making process many biases can get in the way. Among the reasons for this kind of drawback the Wikipedia enumerates the following reasons: "Selective search for evidence Premature termination of search for evidence Conservatism and inertia Experiential limitations Selective perception Wishful thinking or optimism Recency Repetition bias Anchoring and adjustment Group think - Peer pressure Source credibility bias Incremental decision making and escalating commitment Inconsistency Attribution asymmetry Role fulfillment Underestimating uncertainty and the illusion of control Faulty generalizations Ascription of causality". (Wikipedia, 2006a). On a closer analysis to all these causes that provoke error in the decision-making process it is easy to find "perception" at the core of all these evils. Most of the causes for faulty decisions in the business real of action happen due to misperceptions in one way or the other. The Wikipedia goes on explaining how the ethical principles of decision making vary widely. It lists the following principles and methods as the most common in any decision-making process: "the most powerful person/group decides (method: dictatorship or oligarchy) everyone participates in a certain class of meta-decisions (method: parliamentary democracy) everyone participates in every decision (direct democracy, consensus decision making)" (Wikipedia, 2006a). As "Groundwork for Making Effective Decisions" the Josephson Institute of Ethics states the following concepts, emphasizing our responsibility and accountability in any decision-making process: "Whether or not we realize it at the time, all our words, actions and attitudes reflect choices. A foundation to good decision-making is acceptance of two core principles: we all have the power to decide what we do and what we say, and we are morally responsible for the consequences