"(Diller). Another appeal to pathos that Diller makes later in the essay is when a mother of a two year-old came to Diller's practice and requested medications, after Diller refused he found out that the boy was already being prescribed lithium, Zoloft and Luvox. Diller's later research and writing within this article appeal to logos because he gives the reader a variety of statistics about the amount of children taking anti-depressant medications. More specifically Diller looks into diagnosing bipolar disorders in young children. Diller states "No one knows precisely how many children are taking these non-stimulant medications. The most recent survey of physicians' practices had 1.5 million children taking an anti-depressant in 1996. Most were teenagers (girls are the majority), but more than 200,000 children under 12 are also prescribed an antidepressant." (Diller). Later Diller discusses how prescriptions for anti-psychotic drugs are being used for unruly behavior rather than hallucinations or other symptoms for schizophrenia. Diller states "No other society prescribes psychoactive medications to children the way we do. We use 80 percent of the world's stimulants such as Ritalin. Only Canada comes close to our rates, using half, per capita, the amounts we do." (Diller). Lawrence Diller found that many of the anti-psychotic medications being given to children have not been studied on the effect the medications will have on children's growth and development.
Other leaders in the field of child psychiatry are not as sanguine. Michael Jellinek, who as the head of child psychiatry at Harvard is effectively Biederman's boss, and Peter Jensen, who recently stepped down as director of child and adolescent research of the National Institutes of Mental Health, have both publicly worried whether physicians' prescribing practices for children have outstripped their scientific substantiation.
