Physicians tell us and pharmacology sales prove to us that the requests for boys to be on Ritalin and teenage girls to be on antidepressants are growing higher and higher and higher.
What is the root issue here?
Is there some physical disease that is becoming more common because of diet, bacteria, or other environmental factors?
I think, rather, that this points to a spiritual condition which is manifesting itself in physical symptoms.
After all, here is a question I would love to have answered:
What chemical imbalance might be caused in a child by an absent or immature father?
Dr. Bruce Woodhall practices medicine in Idaho and wrote recently in Touchstone magazine
We cannot measure a “daddy level” in the bloodstream of a child the way we can measure drug levels, but I wish we could. Maybe then we would have hard data to support the anecdotal evidence I and other clinicians gather every day. When dad is not there – “there” as in living in the home – something deep in a child’s psyche perceives a critical deficit, a desperate and frightening imbalance that prey’s on the child’s particular vulnerabilities, causing him to careen off into unhealthy extremes.
I believe that the rise of Ritalin and antidepressants culture in children and teens suggests to me that the message our children are articulating is often “I need my daddy! I need the sound of his voice as I settle down to sleep at night. I need his reassuring touch when I awake in the morning. I need the security of knowing that he is there with my mother and me, providing for us, protecting us, and loving us. I just need him!
The plea in this article just broke my heart. I am begging God.
God, our Father, make RBC into a new family for those who have no godly family of their own.
God, our Father, use RBC to grow boys and young men into godly fathers.
God, place your hand upon our men, kindle your convicting Spirit inside of them and draw them away from sin and toward mature masculinity.