Attention Deficit Disorder - Is ADHD A Real Disease?
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The vast majority of Ritalin and Adderall is given to school children in America to treat an alleged disease called ADHD. Children who suffer from ADHD are said to be inattentive, impulsive, and hyperactive. They often get bored easily in class, squirm in their seats, are always on the go, or don't get along with other students or the teacher.
In other words, many children diagnosed with ADHD may simply be bright, normal kids, full of energy and bored out of their minds sitting in public-school classrooms.
In his testimony to the Pennsylvania House Democratic Policy Committee, Bruce Wiseman, National President of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, stated that "thousands of children put on psychiatric drugs are simply 'smart.'" He quoted the late Sydney Walker, a psychiatrist and neurologist, as saying,
"They're hyper not because their brains don't work right, but because they spend most of the day waiting for slower students to catch up with them. These students are bored to tears, and people who are bored fidget, wiggle, scratch, stretch, and (especially if they are boys) start looking for ways to get into trouble."
Boredom is not the only reason children can exhibit symptoms of ADHD. Perfectly normal children who are over-active (have a lot of energy), rebellious, impulsive, day-dreamers, sensitive, undisciplined, bored easily (because they are bright), slow in learning, immature, troubled (for any number of reasons), learning disabled (dyslexia, for example), can also be inattentive, impulsive, or hyperactive.
Also, many factors outside the classroom can stress or emotionally affect children. Some of these factors are: not getting love, closeness, or attention from their parents; if a parent, friend, or sibling is sick or dies; if the parents are divorcing and there is anger, shouting, or conflict at home; domestic violence at home; sexual, physical, or emotional abuse by parents or siblings; inattention and neglect at home; personality clashes with parents or siblings; envy or cruelty directed at a child by classmates or by siblings at home, and many other factors.
Also, many other medical conditions can cause children to mimic some or all of ADHD's symptoms. Some of these conditions are: Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), allergies, learning disabilities, hyper or hypothyroidism, hearing and vision problems, mild to high lead levels, spinal problems, toxin exposures, carbon monoxide poisoning, metabolic disorders, genetic defects, sleeping disorders, post-traumatic subclinical seizure disorder, high mercury levels, iron deficiency, B-vitamin deficiencies (from poor diet), Tourette's syndrome, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, early-onset diabetes, heart disease, cardiac conditions, early-onset bipolar disorder, worms, viral and bacterial infections, malnutrition or improper diet, head injuries, lack of exercise, and many others.
Because these medical conditions can cause some or all of ADHD's symptoms, it becomes next to impossible for any teacher, principal, or family doctor to claim with any certainty that a child has ADHD. To be certain, a doctor would have to test the child for all these other possible medical conditions. Since parents or doctors rarely do this, every diagnosis of ADHD is suspect, to say the least.
Any of these medical conditions, normal personality variations, emotional problems, or outside-the-classroom stress-factors can disturb a child's attention, natural enthusiasm, or desire to learn in class, and make the child exhibit symptoms of ADHD. Yet, as psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, author of "Talking Back To Ritalin," and director of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, notes, "These are the types of [normal] children who get diagnosed as suffering ADHD and who get subdued with stimulants and other medications."
Many reputable authorities, such as Dr. Breggin, deny that ADHD, the disorder for which Ritalin is most commonly prescribed, even exists. Researchers have found no valid physical evidence of the disease or laboratory medical tests to prove it exists.
Parents, do not fall for the ADHD propaganda that public school authorities are now attempting to force on you and your children. While some children can have ADHD-type "symptoms" for various reasons, ADHD itself turns out to be a bogus or unproven disease. Many public schools now use this bogus disease as a convenient excuse to pressure parents to give their normal but bored or high-energy children mind-altering drugs. I also urge you to read Dr. Breggin's book, "Talking Back To Ritalin."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Article Copyrighted © 2005 by Joel Turtel.
Joel Turtel is the author of "Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children." Website: www.mykidsdeservebetter.com, Email: lbooksusa@aol.com, Phone: 718-447-7348.Free Articles & Content for Your Site
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Public Schools, Public Menace:
How Public Schools Lie to Parents and Betray Our Children
Author Joel Turtel thoroughly educates readers about the condition of public schools in this country. This book is hard-hitting and packs a punch. Yet, the author has been careful to research his facts, and includes extensive footnotes and a bibliography.
Educating our nation's children is everyone's concern. Future leaders are sitting in classrooms today, and it's imperative that they receive a quality education. However, a close inspection of our schools reveals a disturbing and sometimes diabolical condition. From curriculum to corrective measures, the author clearly shows that the nation's education system is not deserving of a passing grade.
This book is divided into two parts, with the first section dealing with the abuses found in today's classrooms. Each chapter slowly and systematically sorts through the facts and fallacies, until readers get a true sense of the education system. The author backs up his opinions with solid statistics, as well as by personal accounts of parents, teachers, and students.
Although all of this information may alternately discourage or enrage readers, the author uses the last section of the book to give clear and practical options for educating children. Home schooling and Internet schools are explored with the same meticulous research that went into the first half of the book. Web sites and teaching materials are listed and critiqued. If anyone is seriously considering either of these educational options, the material presented here will provide a solid introduction.
The author unequivocally equips readers to understand and evaluate the education system, so they can make wise decisions about their children's futures. This reviewer applauds the time and effort it took to bring this book to publication. Most interesting was the idea of education entering a free market system. In fact, the author, who is an education policy analyst, makes several comprehensive suggestions. These pages will certainly open up readers' minds to daring new ideas.
This book gets top grades from this reviewer! -- Joyce Handzo, Christian Book Previews.com
Talking Back to Ritalin:
What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHDReview #1
I am a licensed clinical social worker with seven years' experience working with troubled children, and am now director of a large therapeutic foster care program. From my practical experience, and from my reading, the negative reviews of this book, calling Breggin unscientific, ranting, etc. have got it exactly wrong. The "literature" supporting Ritalin and other stimulants is biased and only intermittently scientific - more like ad copy than fact.
It is easy to see why stimulants dominate the treatment of ADHD. Drug companies spend over $20 billion a year on promotion - more than they spend on research.What does this money buy them? David Healy, internationally known psychiatric researcher and writer, claims about 50 percent of all psychiatric journal articles are ghost written by employees of drug companies, and that 30% of The American Psychiatric Association's income comes from drug company subsidies, grants and advertising. Around 70 percent of all drug research is funded by the drug companies themselves, and most of the rest, funded by the government, is heavily influenced by drug companies' extensive lobbying machinery.
Major journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet) have lamented the control of research and publishing by drug company money: The New England Journal of Medicine editorialized, stating they could hardly find reviewers for their psychiatric drug articles who did not have conflicts of interest due to financial ties with drug companies. Studies funded by drug companies, that don't support the companies' drugs, are rarely published.
The bottom line: professionals and the public are bombarded with a stream of "research" and "information" financed and spun by the people who make and sell these drugs. The conflict of interest is palpable.
Many people lack access to effective non-drug ways to deal with "ADHD." But this is no proof that the drugs are especially effective and safe - it just shows the advantage of having billions of dollars to finance and promote the drugs.
I have a challenge for readers who dismiss Breggin's book: Read half a dozen responsible critiques of biopsychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Try David Healy's The Creation of Psychopharmacology, also Healy's Let Them Eat Prozac (soon to come out in the U.S.), Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash, Fisher and Greenberg's From Placebo to Panacea - Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test, and Elliott Valenstein's Blaming the Brain - The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health.
These are not works by new agers who think crystals heal schizophrenia. They are by respected academics, researchers and clinicians (and not all of them, especially Healy and Glenmullen, are against psychiatric drugs).
But read these books, and note the claims and evidence they cite about the drugs. Now, here's the challenge: look in mainstream psychiatric literature for any serious attempt to address these claims. I've read over forty books, pro and con, on psychiatric drugs - and I've yet to find pro-drug literature that addresses 98% of these arguments, not in general, and not point by point.
This is a matter of informed consent. See if Peter Breggin's words in Toxic Psychiatry are not at least very plausible: "In the world of modern psychiatry claims can become truth, hopes can become achievements and propaganda is taken as science".
Yes, Breggin is angry. He pulls no punches and gives no quarter. But he deserves serious consideration - he has been qualified as an expert witness in numerous product liability cases against drug companies around the country. Try to find, anywhere, point by point refutations of the specific claims he makes in this book. Except for a few points, biopsychiatry's silence on Breggin's claims is deafening. Ask an "authority" on ADHD whether, as Breggin claims, the pannel of experts at the NIH Consensus Conference on ADHD DID or DID NOT conclude in their final report, "..there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction," and ask the "authority" who it was that later took it upon himself to edit that statement to muddle the wording, but without changing its bottom line. And ask if it is true that the conference organizer, Peter Jensen, later admitted in a 2000 article that the experts at this conference found NO proof that "ADHD reflects a disordered state."(See Breggin, page 16).
If, after looking into the issue, you decide to give your child Ritalin, so be it. But each parent, child and professional deserves to know the whole story - something you will not get reading standard psychiatric literature.
- Peter C. Dwyer (Baltimore, Maryland United States)
Review #2
I read this book after my son started having trouble in first grade and was sent to the principal so many times he had earned his way up to 3 days of in-school suspension. His infractions, although inappropriate, didn't seem incredibly bad to me (humming in the bathroom, putting a spider on his private area during show and tell, batting a girl with the long sleeves of his teacher's shirt, saying "middle finger", spitting out water over another child's desk and backpack), and in-school suspension didn't seem to be changing his behavior either.
However, my son has always been active and moving, and definitely does not respond well to pure authority. I suspected ADHD and took him to a doctor. I grew up with a chiropractor as a father and didn't want to put him on drugs, but thought maybe it would be necessary.
I also have a Ph.D. and checked out armfuls of books about ADHD and began reading. I picked up whatever was newest and available in the library, with no regard to ideology. I read lots of the books and identified with many things my son was doing. I took my son to a psychologist who said he probably had a bit of ADHD and maybe some sensory integration issues. But she pointed out that the trouble was at school. "You wouldn't be here except for school, right?" she asked. That's right. Our son is challenging but we manage him just fine at home and have a very happy home life. The psychologist gave me pause about just where the problem lay.
Then I read Talking Back to Ritalin. And I got mad. You mean, there is absolutely no evidence for these claims in all these other books I read that there is anything wrong with the brains of kids diagnosed ADHD? You mean that these stimulant drugs don't really 'attach' to the deficient receptors and 'correct' the imbalance, like all the other books were claiming? They claimed this, but where was their proof? They had no citations, no hard evidence behind these claims, nothing! Dr. Breggin, on the other hand, was reporting the available scientific evidence. The real stuff, that the doctors publish in journals, not what they say in books for the public. Now I haven't read those articles, but when he quotes Barkley who admitted that there is no way technologically to tell the difference between brains of 'normal' kids and 'ADHD' kids, it's pretty convincing that nothing has really been found.
And he makes sense. My latent unease over drugs became horror that I might have possibly done this to my son. Breggin quotes one study (p. 29) where 122 kids were put on stimulants for 1-23 weeks, and 9% of the children developed tics, including one who developed an irreversible Tourette's syndrome! Is this the kind of probability of a drug CAUSING a problem that I want to subject my kid to?
I saw school administrators and doctors talking about medication, for my son with his problems, as if it were harmless. Doesn't sound harmless to me. Stunts growth? Causes loss of appetite? Is as addictive as cocaine? Causes a rebound effect after they come off it, that could make them behave worse? Flatlines kids so they don't feel emotions? This is a drug that should not even be talked about with kids like mine, who just like to move and explore!
Read this book. You owe it to yourself to hear the other side of the story, because there is a LOT out there about the medication side. Maybe you won't be convinced, but for me, this guy has the scientific evidence on his side, and it all makes sense too.
Oh, and by the way, I watched my son's teacher, and was dismayed to find a very negative attitude. A voice inside me said, "Get him out of this classroom." I did, and he is now with another teacher who is calm, kind and loving, and he is doing great. I'm shaking with fear from what I might have done to my son because of this great big drug-company-pushed engine.
- J. Larson-Hall (Denton, TX)
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Attention Deficit Disorder - Is ADHD A Real Disease?
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