Psychotropic Childhoods: Global Mental Health and Pharmaceutical Children

While the W orld H ealth O rganization calls to ‘scale up’ access to psychotropic drugs for children in the global S outh, research from the global N orth has found that long‐term use of psychotropic drugs may be at best ineffective, or at worst harmful. Questioning what counts as evidence within the M ovement for G lobal M ental H ealth, this article maps the physical, psychological and sociopolitical effects of increasingly global psychotropic interventions into children's lives. This psychiatrisation will be read alongside colonisation, leading to the uncomfortable question of whether every child should have the right to a psychotropic childhood.