A Wake-Up Call for Chiropractors to Step Up as True Conservative Care Providers
Hard-hitting WSJ Investigation 11/21/25
As a DC I was both sad and grateful to see today’s front-page story in the Wall Street Journal. The personal story of Danielle Gansky was devastating: started on stimulants at age 7 after school pressure, only to cycle through 14 different psychiatric drugs by her late 20s. The medications dulled her personality, made her irritable and sleepy, and left her feeling “hijacked” by the drugs — a struggle she’s still facing at 29 while trying to wean off antidepressants.
The Data Behind the Crisis
WSJ’s analysis of Medicaid records (2019–2023) paints an alarming picture:
- Children prescribed ADHD medication were more than 5 times as likely to be on additional psychiatric drugs (antipsychotics, antidepressants, etc.) just four years later.
- One in five kids who start ADHD meds go on to polypharmacy.
- Only 37% of newly medicated children had any record of prior behavioral therapy — despite American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines that explicitly recommend behavioral therapy as first-line treatment, especially for children under age 6.
- Access barriers to behavioral therapy remain huge: long waitlists, high costs, poor insurance coverage, and too few providers.
Why the Cascade Happens
Drugs are the fast and highly marketed way to treat people. Plus, doctors and patients report that side effects from the initial stimulant — insomnia, agitation, mood swings, loss of appetite — are frequently “treated” with yet more medications rather than dose adjustments or non-drug alternatives. There is shockingly little research on the safety of most drug combinations in developing brains. Yet one study of over 24,000 kids found “psychotropic polypharmacy” in over 20% of patients, and “only a quarter of prescribing practice variations between psychiatrists and PCPs were explained by need factors”. (Medhekar, 2019)
Stay in Our Lane, and know what we can help
Many of these same children show up in chiropractic offices, sometimes after head trauma, MVA, or other somatic issues and related neurologic complaints tied directly to attention, regulation, and behavior:
- Poor postural control and motor coordination
- Sensory processing challenges
- Chronic tension patterns and shallow breathing that amplify anxiety (perhaps not unrelated to hours bent over a tablet or phone)
- Weak interoceptive awareness (knowing what’s happening inside the body…possibly inhibited by lack of moving the body)
Modern, evidence-aligned chiropractic care — especially neurologic rehabilitation, breathing retraining, and interoceptive exercises — directly overlaps with the behavioral therapy the guidelines say should come first.
Understanding Their Model So We Can Communicate Ours
Healers such as DCs and others should stay in our respective lanes! That said, to collaborate confidently with pediatricians and psychiatrists, we need to speak their language — including the pharmacologic frameworks they were taught in school (even the outdated ones).
ADHD drugs usually focus on dopamine and norepinephrine, but to me adult anxiety and depression are the bigger target. The point is to understand what other clinicians are doing- Check out this powerful 1-minute excerpt from Section J of our CEsoup.com course Modern Chiropractic Integration on CE Soup. Emory psychology professor and licensed psychologist Dr. Kenneth Carter, PhD clearly explains the monoamine hypothesis of depression — the decades-old “chemical imbalance” idea that still drives much SSRI and polypharmacy prescribing — and why current neuroscience has largely moved beyond it:
(The full Section J module — “SSRIs and the Monoamine Hypothesis” — is available here and is worth the full 60–90 minutes for any DC wanting to have credible, respectful conversations with prescribing providers: https://cesoup.com/course/modern-chiropractic-integration-j-ssri/)
Understanding exactly what medical colleagues believe (and the limitations of that belief) allows us to open the door with:
“I understand the original rationale for adding the SSRI/antipsychotic, but before escalating further, can we trial 6–8 weeks of focused conservative neurologic and interoceptive care with objective outcome measures?”
The Opportunity for True Collaboration
Physicians are overwhelmed. Parents are terrified. Kids are caught in the middle.
DCs and other non-pharmaceutical healers who provide evidence-based ocular stabilization, interoceptive awareness, focused motion accuracy, balance training and other neurological techniquesn and behavioral tools can become the conservative-care bridge that finally puts guidelines into practice: behavioral/somatic interventions first, medication only when truly necessary. That said, only the prescribing physician can take someone off a prescribed drug (which means DCs can’t!), but connecting with the physician for a trial can pave the path to helping others as well.
In other words-The WSJ just gave you the perfect conversation starter with local pediatricians, school counselors, and psychiatrists.
Call to Action
- Check out the Modern Chiropractic Integration courses, as well as other courses on CEsoup.com like the Biomechanics & Interoception series. Your next patient’s developing brain is counting on us to offer real alternatives.
- If you treat these cases, let me know what success you’ve had co-managing these cases drug-free or with minimal meds?
Keywords: Chiropractic ADHD DrugFreeKids Interoception ConservativeCareFirst BehavioralTherapy Polypharmacy
Full WSJ article (paywall): https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/kids-adhd-drugs-medication-06dfa0b7
