Slashdot Mirror
A Million Kids Misdiagnosed with ADHD?
Jamie was one of several people who submitted links to a story proclaiming that as many as a
million kids were misdiagnosed with ADHD simply for being the youngest and therefore least mature in their classes. Worse still, I wonder how many of those kids are permanently put on drugs.
Just let kids be kids?
Can't really say I'm all that surprised. The more responsible/seasoned parents out there pretty much called b.s. on this long ago and actually discipline their kids instead of medicating them.
I presume most of these diagnoses are based on kids simply being kids. They're packed with energy and ready for playtime at a moment's notice. The early years of schooling is/was geared towards training them to control that behavoir. What the heck happened? What's next? Treating restless leg syndrome?*
*Disclaimer: I know no one with this personally, nor do I know if this really, truly is a severe medical condition. I use a pillow between my legs at night if their existence is bothering me.
but the process of diagnosing ADHD would condemn just about every kid who took the test. "Doctor, doctor! My child runs around uncontrollably, can't keep his attention on one thing at a time, and doesn't like school...oh Doctor, what do I do?" "ADHD, MUTHA FUCKA!"
"Ghandi has ADD! Ghandi has ADD! You get it from toilet seats! Use a protective sheet!" Oh man, I miss Clone High...
Living With a Nerd
*** First things first: I don't doubt that a great many children have been misdiagnosed with ADHD or that the U.S. is a non-thinking, pill-popping kind of place. ***
HOWEVA, I'm still bracing myself for the Slashdot pseudoscientists who will come a-rushin' out of the woodwork this morning. They'll immediately throw the baby out with the bathwater and trash EVERYTHING related to psychiatry. They'll insist that nearly all psychiatric diagnoses are horse dung and that The Man (or whoever) just wants a drugged-up, compliant populace.
Aside: What is it about certain I.T. types? Dubious brilliance in one tiny area of the (I.T.) world leads them to believe that they'd be logical experts in wholly different fields.
I maybe a special case. But I was diagnosed as a kid with ADHD. However I refused to take the medicine all of my life(I still have ADHD). But not being medicated didn't affect me. I always had top grades, and now enjoying finishing my PhD.d In physics. Anyway I am not advocating abstaining medication. But my point is, that drugging the kids is not always the solution.
I have a severely ADHD child- he's not normal, he needs serious drugs to function in school, and he knows it. (He's extremely bright and is fully aware of what he's capable of when he's on them- you ever have to deal with child sobbing because he can't focus on simple tasks?) ADHD is one of the most misunderstood conditions out there- it is real, it can be severe, and we need to avoid knee-jerk "It's all made up" reactions
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Its really easy to figure out if your kid was misdiagnosed. People without ADHD who take the medication (e.g. Concerta) have a very different reaction than, say, my kid who barely notices it but is able to concentrate in class.
When I was a kid, I was always outside running around with friends. Playing by the local pond catching tadpoles, frogs, fish, etc. Playing in the fields catching snakes and bugs while eating raspberries and strawberries. Playing in the woods and streams making dams. Riding our bikes _everywhere_. In the winter we were always outside sledding and having snowball fights. etc. etc. etc.
Why are we expecting kids to sit in one spot for hours on end staring at a teacher/board and expecting them to stay calm and fully attentive? I know school is necessary but that's 7 hours of basically sitting there and then the kids come home and are basically expected to just sit there and do homework and then just sit there and eat dinner. Are we just setting ourselves up for failure? I mean, are we just asking kids to _not_ be kids and then drugging them up to make them comply?
I'm only 30, and frankly I knew of _no_ kids with ADD, let alone ADHD. There were merely kids that liked to sit and read or play quietly and then there were the kids who wanted to play football all the time or otherwise be active.
Seriously, what happened to kids expending their energy? Why do parents/administration expect kids to be these calm and attentive beings who just sit there and want to be talked to all day?
Maybe there are some children who have an imbalance somewhere. It happens. But overall, when a kid wants to run around and play, guess what, they are KIDS! It's part of being a kid. Throwing drugs down their throat to turn them into the kid that is more convenient and calm isn't the answer unless there is a _real_ (read: rare) issue.
My sister works in medical science and was involved in a study at Flinders University (South Australia) regarding ADD/ADHD kids.
I first found out about it after she caught me with some Dexampheatime (for recreation)
I'm not 100% on the details as its not my field, but the basic gist of it was that they got 2 groups of ADD/ADHD kids and took them off their meds (usually Dexamphetamine or Ritalin). Removed all junk food from their diet and made them eat healthily (both test and control group)
then in the test group they gave them Omega 3 fish oils and Evening primrose oil capsules.
the summary was that the bad fatty acids that reside in the grey matter (between the brain halves) interfere with attention and focus.
As they stopped the junk food both groups got better, but the test group who were replacing the bad fatty acids with good fatty acids (the Omega 3 fish oils and Evening primrose oil) improved more than the control group.
My fiance's son was recently accused of having ADHD by the social-workers masquerading as "teachers" at his school. See, unlike his older siblings, he doesn't LIKE school. It's not fun to him. He'd rather be outside running around, or shootin' zombies on the PS3, or just hanging out with Mom.
However, in today's Brave New World of elementary school, being "unhappy" is NOT ALLOWED and is a symptom of ADHD and depression. The "teachers" (and I will put quotes around the name because they were nothing more than armchair social workers) were hell-bent on getting him on ADHD. Not a single one of them was a medical doctor. But, they had all their ministry of education created "information sheets" that gave them a nice formula for identifying potential ADHD cases in the classes. And like the dutiful little Nazis they were, they religiously hunted down every kid that just wasn't happy enough for "further evaluation."
Fortunately, our family doctor did not agree. He put a stop to this nonsense. Maybe he's one of the few, but our doctor said "Maybe he just doesn't like going to school?" Someone give that man a candy apple for stating the bloody obvious.
Like it or not, ADHD is an industry. A LOT of money is being made off the over-prescription of Ritalin. Children are being unfairly "accused" of ADHD simply because they don't fit some happy shiny ideal that no child should ever be if they are truly healthy.
I HATED school when I was a kid. The popular vernacular for elementary school in my day was "jail." I guess nowadays I would have been dragged off and drugged up for daring to crack a frown at the teacher.
But teachers with troublesome kids are overly anxious to "diagnose" them to get them on drugs to shut them up.
ADHD isn't even a real illness; it's simply a conglomeration of behavioral patterns.
My stepson has been tested twice for ADHD and both times they came out negative. The tests were recommended by his 1st and 3rd grade teachers (he is going into 7th now). He is one of the youngest kids in his class. However, he is in the gifted and talented program, has a high IQ and is currently reading books about the String Theory. We seek out teachers that can handle a child that is, probably, overall, smarter than they are. If we encounter a teacher who asks him to be tested, we show them the original 2 results. Then they can either suck it up or ask to have him moved to another class.
Alan
That's significantly lower than the 100% misdiagnose rate I was thinking of ...
There's no profit to the pharma companies in kids just being kids. When was it that we decided a significant percentage of all children suddenly had a mental disorder?
In 15 minutes they diagnosed me with ADHD and got me a prescription for the drugs (which I don't take) - while I was 20 years old.
If all the diagnosises are made that quickly then I'd be pretty worried about it.
Most of the teachers I had when I was in school neglected lesson planning, and instead assigned pointless busy work like writing vocab words 20 times each or doing 50 math problems where 10 would do. School really only needs to be about 4 hours long. Any longer than that and the kids lose focus, and the teachers run out of stuff to teach.
when my son was 4, he was in a very good pre-school. In the middle of the year he was moved up to the next age group ( 5 and 6 year olds. Luckily a girl was moved up at the same time. A month after the move, my wife and I were called in for a conference because the teacher had concerns about my son's behaviour. In the middle of the meeting, I asked a question about the age distribution in the class. The director and the teacher both looked at each other. You could almost see the light bulb going on. Of the 20 kids in the class, 10 were older 6 year olds, 8 were older 5 year olds. The other two were my son and the girl who had moved up from the 3 and 4 year old group. She was also having "issues". The meeting closed quickly with apologies.
Maybe if the kids had less sugar, and parents stop acting like lil ol Skyler shuoldn't be disciplined because he was only 4 and it was so cute, some of these kids wouldn't have ADHD. Just control your kids so that the psychiatrists or whomever can spend time with the kids that actually have ADHD.
{Full Disclosure: I was diagnosed ADD (nowa-a-days called ADHD-I) at an early age and have been on Adderall since then. Today, I choose to continue recieving the prescription.}
Not to be disrespectful or contrarian or anything, but are these drugs really intrinsically bad? Even under a misdiagnosis, isn't it possible that these drugs can provide tangable benefits for the child? I don't want to jump right on and say that there is, but shouldn't we at least examine the possibility that these drugs could provide benefits and (assuming they do even for the misdiagnosed) allow the parents (and the child once he's of an appropriate age) to choose whether to administer the medication?
What's really wrong with these drugs? Yes they have side-effects, and yes there are consequences and very different reactions in people who don't have what they are prescribed for, but should we jump to the conclusion that these are not worth it or that only those whom the drugs were researched for can benefit from them?
What? No, I don't have answers to any of these questions. I want to know people's opinions. I am of the opinion that it is neither right nor wrong to let nature take its course or to intervene. Of course, this simple opinion presupposes a lot about the point of views I may be arguing about. I want to here those views and understand them as well.
Demented But Determined.
I started to read the article and found it... oh look shinny rocks...
But what about all the other children who are diagnosed? Isn't it strange that the diagnosis has increased dramatically in the last few years? And with children sucking down 20oz Cokes (Sugar AND Caffeine) with little exercise, it's no wonder many of them are bouncing off the walls. And when you have arm chair doctors making the diagnosis putting pressure on MDs for a pill - especially if they're being threatened to have their kids expelled ...
I can tell you from personal experience that the diagnosis isn't exact - it's very subjective. One doc (MD) will tell you one thing, a PhD will say another. Mental health issues are a real pain in the ass to get nailed down. We also live in a culture that wants quick fixes - i.e. gimme a pill to make it better.
Here's something a relative who was diagnosed ADHD by two different docs wanted for his son who was also diagnosed: no medication even though he was getting a lot of pressure to put him on something (it wasn't Ritalin which surprised me).Granted, the kid wasn't a severe case - so, forgive me if your child has a severe case of ADHD
Here's why.
He learned to deal with it because he never knew he had it - he was in his mid-forties and got through school (BS Chem E. GA Tech) before educators thought every little boy had it. He wanted his son to learn to do the same thing.Being ADHD was part of who he was.
He was diagnosed when he boy was. It's a long story.
So many children, other than your son, are probably missed diagnosed, need to lay off the Cokes, and probably have other issues but are diagnosed with ADHD to make the adult's lives easier.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Actually, in ye olde days, parents used to just sedate them. Just read some ads from the late 19'th century or early 20'th century. They were selling some unholy mixtures of opium, morphine, heroin, chloroform, and in some cases alcohol as a way to keep your kids out of the way. And you didn't even need a prescription for that either.
And in the poorer countries they just used poppy tea, pretty much for the opium again.
Honestly, it's not something new. Don't let nostalgia paint a false image for you, there actually never was an age where parents and school just dealt with it responsibly. If there even was some wonder drug that let one turn off the kids -- either as in "asleep" or as in "drooling unfocused in a corner" -- there always were a bunch of parents who wanted that.
No, I'm not saying it's a _good_ thing. Just that it's not a new one.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Like everyone else is saying I also would have put on drugs. All my elementary report cards said, "Johnny talks to much in class!" With enough positive and negative reinforcement -- I learned to control my behavior.
I was an Honor Graduate of the Air Force Academy and a jet instructor pilot -- and a programmer in my later years! I hate to think what would have happened if I'd been drugged.
That teachers and doctors misdiagnose ADHD has been known for 30-40 years, so what is different this time.
It is done because it is easier to give the kids a couple of drugs to keep them in the seat then to do deal with the problems those kids cause.
I hear about it frequently from a couple of friends of mine who are school psychologists. Parents come in with misbehaving kids looking for drugs to calm them down and make them more obedient - basically a pharmaceutical cure for their bad parenting.
We have an entire generation of kids who are being tagged ADHD when there is nothing wrong with them because parents don't want to deal with the responsibility of raising them, or because the parents have heard that Ritalin will make them get better grades, or for some other reason that has nothing to do with the behavioral health of the child.
A million misdiagnosed just because they're younger? Wait until they start looking into how many kids are misdiagnosed because they're too smart and not being challenged by our schools that are set up to cater to the lowest common denominator.
I was misdiagnosed with ADD as a kid. Turns out, I was just bored out of my fucking skull. Second, third, and fourth grades were the hardest for me because the material should have been covered in one year, not three. Some schools have realized this and starting pulling the smart kids out of 'general population' and putting them in their own curriculum track which is much more challenging.
That's what they should look into
Aero2600
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
Nice Reddit referral in the article link there. Is this where we get our news?
(*) Telling someone who has actual ADHD any of these phrases is equivalent to telling a paraplegic to get up and walk. It might work if you're Jesus himself, otherwise it's an exercise in futility.
I have ADHD and I was given mediation for a while but I refused to stay on it. For me, I'm glad I have ADHD because I can multitask my thoughts while everyone else is brainlessly focused on a single task. My biggest issue with ADHD has been trying to convince everyone else that the label does not imply that I am disabled in some way. In fact, I always found myself two steps ahead of my teaches in school. My test scores didn't reflect my knowledge because I suck at tests (due to staying focused). If this was a real problem then you would hear the students requesting drugs to cure their "disorder".
Also, most ADHD drugs are so short-acting that even if someone takes two doses a day, there are still _plenty_ of hours left in a day to observe the unmedicated state.
If someone gets "put on drugs permanently" for ADHD, they should sue the bajeezus out of whoever ordered that.
Funny thing is that caffeine should do the opposite of making a kid with ADHD bounce off the walls. Not a bad litmus test.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
My parents had a theory about this. When I was young, Ritalin was the biggest fad. Better than half the elementary school was on it, and every day they would line up around the corner to get their medication. Further, it was recommended for nearly every child in the school whenever they got in trouble of any kind.
The contributing factors that made the perfect storm of Ritalin were as follows:
-The drug company wanted to sell as much Ritalin as possible.
-The company bought legislation that classified ADHD as a learning disability, so that schools got more money for each child who was diagnosed.
-The same legislation meant that if you qualified for government assistance, you'd get more money for each child that was on Ritalin.
So the school now became the company's taxpayer-financed agent to push Ritalin, a drug required long-term to treat a condition that no one quite understood. The school had a financial incentive to have the psychologist diagnose everyone he could with ADHD, and if you were on welfare they could extend an incentive to you as well. I can offer one other piece of evidence: I had a friend whose parents did not want to give him these drugs under any circumstance as they understood neither ADHD nor the effects of the drug. When they were pressuring the family to medicate him, they handed his parents a stack of teacher's notes ostensibly to show he's been acting up. As my friend's parents looked at the notes, they noticed that some of the notes had inconsistencies such as wrong gender (she vs. he) and wrong name. The administration making the Ritalin sales pitch had taken notes about a child with ADHD and simply changed the name on them! At this point, they pulled my friend out of school and moved to a different area.
Ultimately, I'm not surprised that this is the case. I'm only surprised that it took so long for people to see through the ruse. I'm happy that my parents did, and sad that most of my friends' parents could not be convinced that ADHD was for my generation a huge drug-pushing scam!
Just give the kids some medical marijuana. Hell, bake it into brownies so they don't have to smoke it. Problem solved in a day.
Modders, please check something before modding it. Searching for "ritalin stimulant" and "ritalin" depressant" both come back with results saying that ritalin is a stimulant. Even Wikipedia says its a stimulant.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
because school districts don't have the money
personally, the idea of school ending at 2 pm is anachronism from the 1950s. today in contemporary usa, both parents work, and the 2 pm school closing time means one parent has to dent their career because of archaic schedule
solution? 2 pm-5 pm, when the parents pick the kids up: recess time, sports time, outside time
1. the kids get more exercise, so they don't have to have a lifetime of being fatties, and, as you noted, they aren't ADHD because their energy levels are expressed appropriately
2. the parents can have careers, without being hamstrung by an antiquated school scheduling system that does no one any good
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I did a lot of research, and found a nearly forgotten technique which has been recently discovered and shows a lot of promise: Disruptive Stimuli Refocussing Behavioural Therapy. Completely drug free, and a full course of treatment can be delivered in as little as one lesson.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I was a kid.... wild. That's how it goes sometimes. My parents were very strict, and expected the best from me. When I didn't adjust to middle school, they took me to a quack (note this is almost 20 years ago) and he gave me a test to complete.
I went to work, and every now and then he would snap his fingers. I would look up and give him a "what?" look?
He replied "Oh nothing, go ahead and continue on your test."
I did so, and he repeated his snapping of his fingers, much to my annoyance 2 more times. After that, I was put on Ritalin, then Dexedrine throughout 7th and 8th grade and refused to take anymore when I entered high school.
During middle school, I never ate - great for a growing body i'm sure - and I ended up at around 6 foot weighing in at 130 lbs. It took a toll on my body and I can only imagine my mind.
Yeah, I don't feel like I have... What we we talking about again?
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
I wonder if Doctors over diagnose ADHD for the same reasons they over diagnose depression.
Friend of mine is Doctor working for the UK National Heath Service and he's told me about how they can be offered cash incentives for prescribing certain drugs, particularly antidepressants. Consequently you go to the doctor with any vague symptoms there is a good chance you will walk away with low dosage Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors(SSRI).
The cash incentives avoid being bribes in a cunning way. If a doctor prescribes enough of a certain pill he gets invited to conferences where they apparently give them more information about the drugs they prescribe. Of course this is out of work hours and the drug companies feel they should compensate the doctors for their time, usually cash in hand with jaw dropping amounts and somehow the after parties end up in hotels with coke and hookers. ''Prescribe our drug and you can come to the next party! ''
I wish I didn't believe him but first hand I went to the doctors with a headache and lethargy and walked away with a months worth of venlafaxine though I never took them after reading the side effects list. 3 years later I passed all the tests to join the Intelligence Core in the British Army but failed the medical because I had apparently previously been diagnosed with depression.
-- it doesn't help the kids at all, the drugs are not a solution. There are many other non-drug related rememdies -- but -- they don't put money into drug company and drug company lobbyists pockets.
For me there are 12,700,000 results for ritalin depressant and 501,000 retults for ritalin stimulant. The top results in both state that ritalin is a stimulant. What does this say?
Most people mistakenly think or wonder if ritalin is a depressant. No harm no foul. Just a bit a disappointment in the mods.
Now that that waste of time is over, I can get back to what I was going to say. (I'm talking about the guy you posted in response too. Not you.) I find it interesting that a friend of mine in high school said that drinking Mountain Dew before bed would help him sleep. I would think this is the same effect as Ritalin. The pieces come together.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
No Child Left Behind, ok?
I maybe a special case. But I was diagnosed as a kid with ADHD. However I refused to take the medicine all of my life(I still have ADHD). But not being medicated didn't affect me. I always had top grades, and now enjoying finishing my PhD.d In physics. Anyway I am not advocating abstaining medication.
I would, in many cases. In America in particular people tend to be over-medicated. I had somewhat high blood pressure a few years ago and the doctor immediately wanted to put me on statins. I said no, did the Atkins diet instead (hey, it was a good excuse to eat lots of red meat), dropped 70 pounds, have kept it off, and now have normal blood pressure and no medication to take.
My wife has a condition that requires her to drink a lot of water (no, it's not diabetes). In the US they had her on one pill to flush the water through, and another to replace all the minerals the first pill was flushing out. In the UK they took her off of both, advised her to drink 8 pints of water each day, which she's done and she's been fine. In fact, she's been much healthier than before, and her blood work shows a far better balance across the spectrum than when she was taking those damn meds the US doctors pushed on her.
Back to ADHD -- I suspect most people diagnosed with ADHD have short attention spans not because of any deficit, dysfunction or syndrome, but simply because they are vastly more intelligent than the slow brains trying to keep their attention. Their attention wanders in order to fill the empty gaps while their slower teachers, parents, and siblings chunter on, stringing together obvious and often uninteresting commentary that the listener has already leaped ten steps ahead of, diverged from, and pursued to more interesting conclusions, and because their mind has wandered, they are diagnosed with ADHD and subsequently drugged.
That's what happened to me as a kid, and the Ritalin took all of the color out of life. Fortunately I only took it for a few months...once I was back off it, my mind was once again free to soar, and I went back to thinking circles around the people who'd drugged me in the first place. And while I'm no slouch, I've known plenty of people smarter than me that have experienced the same thing, which makes me suspect it is quite commonplace.
My wife exhibits similar traits (a tendency to tune out and think of other things). Not-so-coincidentally, she is extremely intelligent. Lucky for her, she was living in the UK before any of those mind-numbing drugs became such popular soporifics for boisterous, curious, unusually intelligent kids.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
We managed to raise our own two boys before ADHD became such a fad. "Everybody" knew that kids developed at different rates, that little girls were more likely to settle down quickly than boys were, and that it would all even out by the time everybody left high school. There were all sorts of ancient platitudes that seemed to impart wisdom: "Boys will be boys" was certainly one. "Let 'em run ragged outdoors, and they'll settle down" was another one. We didn't hit our kids, but discipline was part of the whole thing, too, as in "Go sit in that chair until you're ready to apologize" for the smaller ones and liberal doses of jug (otherwise known as "being kept in after school") for the older ones. Teachers took quite a bit of pride in being able to handle their kids and to maintain an orderly, productive classroom.
I'm amazed by what I see in schools now, and I'm very troubled on behalf of kids who are being drugged when their only malady seems to be that they're rambunctious. It disturbs me that recess, that golden opportunity to run off a bit of energy, seems to be regarded as superfluous in many school systems. As with everything else, we'll be reaping the whirlwind in twenty years or so. I'm afraid the payoff on this one will be kids whose natural talents will be wasted because they haven't been allowed to be kids.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
I have ADHD. I've had it since I was a young child. It has been diagnosed independently at various points in my life by several psychiatrists and psychologists, most of whom are ADHD specialists. I have no doubt that ADHD continues to be overdiagnosed, especially by family physicians who don't have enough knowledge and experience on the subject. However, there are also a lot of people on Slashdot who know even less about it but still go on and on about how ADHD doesn't exist and parents just need to be more tolerant. It's not all about the parents.
Right now, I'm in the home stretch of a PhD in computer science. Getting to this point would have been nearly impossible if it weren't for getting treatment for the ADHD. At first, I tried to do without the medicine. I don't like it and I worry about the long-term effects. However, I wasn't getting things done and I was sinking into a hole to a point where I knew I couldn't possibly finish the PhD if I didn't get treatment. As it stands, medication is one component of the overall plan for coping with my inability to concentrate on my work and get things done normally. I've learned a lot of strategies from reading bits here and there, and just studying the problem as I worked my way through undergrad and now grad school. There are dozens of tactics that I use regularly that have worked well. As one example, I carry a supply of earplugs everywhere I go and use them whenever I need to study or work. There's no silver bullet, but together, they have helped a lot.
That said, without the medicine, I don't think I could accomplish what I'm trying to do. That's not a lack of confidence. It's just a realization that if you have to read 5+ research papers a week on top of a bunch of other stuff, it's not going to work if it takes you an hour to read two pages - 4-5 hours for a 10-page conference paper of any substance. Before I got on the medicine, people around me thought I might end up dropping out.
While I totally agree that overdiagnosis of ADHD is a problem, it would be kinder if folks here would recognize that for some people, ADHD it really is an important component of the problem and getting treatment can help them get on their way.
There are a variety of perspectives out there, but one that is gathering steam (and makes a lot of sense to me personally) is Thomas Brown's work on executive functioning. A couple of references:
I was an ADHD kid who went undiagnosed. Ultimately, I ended up dropping out of high school with an IQ of 156 and SAT scores of 1530. Why? I simply couldn't pay attention in class. Finally, at the age of 29 I was diagnosed, and turned around and got a B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. in the course of 8 years, while working full-time.
Every study I've seen, prior to this one, says that ADHD is more often underdiagnosed than overdiagnosed. And the consequences of a missed diagnosis can be devastating.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
The article reports that about 20% of children with an ADHD diagnosis are mis-diagnosed. Use your math skills, shitheads. That means that about 80% are correctly diagnosed.
ADHD is real. It has a wide spectrum of presenting symptoms. Some individuals do not have hyperactivity, but only inattention, so you're not going to see them bouncing off of the walls.
My niece was diagnosed with inattention type ADHD when she was in grade school. After she was started on medication, her teacher commented to my sister that my niece was raising her hand in class. My niece had always been 'daydreaming' before. My nephew has the hyperactivity type. It's like flipping a light switch when he's taken his medication. He is almost impossible to keep on task when he's off his medications, and easily stays on task when he's taken it.
When asked why I drink so much coffee, I used to kiddingly tell people that I was self treating my asthma because of the close relationship between caffeine and theophylline. But I may have been also self treating my own ADD. I don't have the hyperactivity type of ADD, but I definitely have the inattention type. And, I think that if I'd been on medication, some things would have been much easier. I used to spend 15 minutes getting a cup of coffee to sit and study 5 minutes before going to get another cup of coffee. I knew I needed to study (some would say that medical school is difficult!), but it was very difficult to sit and concentrate.
My kid drinks a cup of espresso and goes to sleep an hour later. How's that for ADHD?
...when lawyers start advertising on late night TV with ads that say,"Were you misdiagnosed as a child with ADHD and force-fed drugs? Did you suffer from physical or psychological injuries as a result of those drugs? You may be entitled to a settlement. Call now the offices of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe at 1-800-LAWYER-UP.
It's amazing how often doctors would rather shove medication down someone's throat than deal with the root issue. It's ADHD now, but back when my wife was a teen it was manic depression. For years they gave her injections, and pills which actually made things worse (caused her to fall asleep in class, too lethargic to do homework, etc). She swore for years she needed medication and just needed to find "the one that works for what I have." After 10 years she finally gave up and started trying to control it herself. She can function just fine when she's doing what she wants, but apart from that she gets moody, irritable, or overly sleepy. She likes to work, so when she was working she was successful, and did just fine (without medication). Dealing with the kids, cleaning the house, etc. is not really her bag, so she can read a book, play her games, watch TV, or yell and scream until she gets back to doing what she wants. Gee, doesn't everyone want to do what they want and have no responsibility. That's not a medical condition it's failure to grow up. The only condition she has is that she is a spoiled brat. Had the "doctors" addressed that issue way back when, her and I both would have been better off.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
... while Asperger's is the plague of the 21st century!
...that I didn't RTFA
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
LiKe omg Wh8T3V3r... Ì håvê ålw hå wê wêrê ðvêr Ðïågñðïñg åñÐ ðvêr mêÐïåïñg ðr ¥ðh. ñð måêr hðw ¥ð lððk å ï hêrê ï... Ohhh a quarter!
The sad thing is when these kids become normal naturally their parents and possibly the kids themselves will think, "Those drugs sure did the job."
In the best case there was no real harm done and the parents are just spent a load of cash. However, I can imagine many worst case senarios where the kid is not so lucky.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
What about the people that are just shitty parents that raise shitty kids?
It obviously can't be the parents fault, they didn't do anything wrong, so the kid must have some sort of "disease" that explains their bad behavior.
wanna ride bikes?!?
I find I sleep better if I drink caffeine, I always wondered why it did not seem to keep me up.
Cheap storage VM.
As an ADHD child myself, on various drugs from grade 1 to OAC (Grade 13 in Ontario), I was put on drugs, but I assure you that by the time I reached the end of school, there was no permanently about it. Maybe when you're younger it's easier to make a child take the drugs, but as they get older and more independent, and as they start to see the effects the drugs have on their personality, there is no permanence unless they want it.
By the time I reached my final years of high school, I hated every day I took my pill. I used to not take them over the summer, and can still remember the week before school started, taking my pills and feeling like I wasn't me anymore. First of all, I was on Dexedrine, which severely impacted my appetite (which is probably why I was a bean pole in high school), but the effect on my personality was drastic. I guess that was the intended effect of the pills, to change me from wildly unfocused, silly and far too chatty/outgoing into a quiet, obedient child who would do as they were told. But as the person taking it, and feeling myself changing every time I took the pill, I found (and still find) the whole thing very unsettling.
Having said that, I am now dating a wonderful girl who is startlingly like me, except she didn't have parents who made her take the ADD meds. Seeing how much of a mess her education was, how much it impacted her social and family life and even her career, made me respect the decision my parents made for me, even if I still disagree with it. Without the drugs I took through elementary and highschool, the odds are I wouldn't have passed, or learned as much as I have, and I probably wouldn't be where I am in life.
To bring things back to the subject at hand, over-diagnosing ADD/ADHD puts millions of kids through the crap I had to go through, as well as putting their parents through it both emotionally and financially. I'm sure my dad (who will most likely read this) could comment on how hard the decision to put me on drugs was, and keeping me on them, fighting me sometimes daily to take them, but I assume the decision wasn't always easy. However, I'm sure these TV parents, which my parents were most assuredly not, enjoy their quieter, more docile children, so maybe they don't care if their child is mis-diagnosed.
ADD/ADHD is a real thing, that should be treated with drugs or behaviour modification (I went through various training classes about "coping skills", learning to identify ADD moments and control them). Just assigning any child who is energetic, or even just a normal 6/16 year old, to the ADD/ADHD bucket in hopes of making them docile is tantamount to a crime. Modifying someones behaviour through drugs for your own convenience and for the teachers convenience is morally reprehensible.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Actually, a big problem with all of this, setting aside whether or not kids are misdiagnosed, is that a lot of these chemicals and treatments aren't well understood in adults let alone studied in children. A lot of doctors are making up treatment regiments as they go: They give a kid something and see what happens. If they don't like the result, they try something else. But then there is a side effect so they add another drug to counter it. But then both changes the kid's behavior so they switch or add a third drug. Doctors continue to do this "refinement" to come up with a chemical cocktail they feel like "its working" but the kid ends up taking a multiple multiple pills where even the kids and parents are unsure what it is supposed to.
A major problem I see is that too much experimenting and too little research on the side effects of all of these chemicals on kids going through developmental stages. It may turn out have a rambunctious kid is less of a health issue than finding out at age 25 they are psychologically addicted and must be continually pumped with expensive drugs or they go into a psychosis from the "sensations" they get without it.
Unfortunately caffeine is not a cure.
School is very different than it was when we were kids (even if you are in your 20s).
Kindergarten is 7-8 hours with ONE recess break, often times no P.E. at all, and lunch is in a hushed lunchroom under strict low noise policy. And it gets even more structured in first grade.
So in this wonderful environment of compulsory silence, sitting still in your desk for 8 hours a day is it really a wonder that tons of kids are emotionally incompatible with school. I couldn't sit still in silence for 8 hours a day.
That isn't even counting homework. My son's friends (he is a FIRST GRADER) have 2+ hours of homework some nights, and at least 30 minutes every night. So 10 hours of school, 11 hours of sleep... He has 3 hours a day to eat, brush his teeth change his clothes, and oh maybe if he gets around to it play. 1 hour of playtime a day? For a small child?
I believe there is a strong case to say that childhood obesity and ADHD over medication are very obviously a product of our society's systematic removal of all childhood leisure time.
TL,DR
Have gnu, will travel.
Teenagers and preteens are competitive bastards, and schools are modeled toward how well you obey, and how well you remenber repetitive stuff (Grinding). Is basically broken. Is not broken for the people that love to remenber stuff, before understanding stuff, the 90% of the population, but is broken for the other 10%.
-Woof woof woof!
I think all kids to some extent are "ADH". The key is figuring out when it's actually ADHD. This is why the diagnosis criteria seems so dubious and why it is often abused.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Millions of the kids prior to the 80s were never properly diagnosed with ADHD, were never put on drugs, and managed to get through life and become adults. Wasn't easy, but they and their parents managed.
.. sometimes drug aren't the only answer.
Imagine that
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I've been through this a few years ago with a kid (now 8) who is severely ADHD. When he was five or six he was already accepted to be evaluated by the professionals at nationally well known hospital for ADHD. One of the things I had tried to consider was how do you define 'hyper'? I found an answer, and it was one that baffled the medical evaluators yet they took seriously anyways.
I counted calories, I had long noticed that he seemed to eat more in a day than my wife and I combined. So I kept food journals for a few days of everything he ate (1/3rd of a jar of peanut butter a day, half a dozen sandwiches etc). I presented the first food journal to the evaluator. Her response was to ask if that was what he ate last week, I told her 'no, that was what ate yesterday'.
I then showed dated journals for several days before that with calorie counts per item. On average he ate between 5000 to 6000 calories per day, every day. Now you have to understand that he is a skinny kid and just burns that many calories being hyper. That was how I defined hyper, by how many calories could be burned every day through activity.
"While I totally agree that overdiagnosis of ADHD is a problem, it would be kinder if folks here would recognize that for some people, ADHD it really is an important component of the problem and getting treatment can help them get on their way."
I don't think anyone here has said that ADHD does not exist or that all diagnoses of ADHD are false.
I'm glad there no one had thought of ADHD when I was a kid. Having a summer birthday meant that I was behind my classmates in terms of emotional maturity those first couple of years in school -- which probably explained much of my behavior. I should have been held back a year.
Additionally, the feminization of institutions means that little boys aren't allowed to be boys any longer. They are expected to be quiet, pensive little girls. If they're not, they're medicated until they act that way.
ADHD is definitely over-diagnosed.
Proverbs 21:19
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration stated in 2008 that written prescriptions for ADHD have risen 500% since 1991.
The National Institute of Mental Health also wrote a summary on this in 2007 with a global focus.
Alamazadarnit, your quote illustrates the whole problem. Been there, solved that.
I have Attention problems. I spent about five years semi-scientifically describing its effects down to the activity parsing level.
If someone has ADD, (*Note the missing H - there are multiple variants!), they get called "moron". Getting called "moron" is what makes you depressed. So an SSRI is a total disaster! What's the chief side effect of SSRI's? Lethargic fatigue! So it makes you more of a "moron".
If the guy has ADD, FIX the ADD. Ritalin, Strattera, custom natural cocktails, whatever. But get the guy thinking straight so he isn't called "moron", and watch him magically stop being depressed.
P.S. SSRI side effects are in fact nasty.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I was also a summer/fall birthday (and my kids are October/November) and understand completely.
..hey, look! There's a bird outside my window!
I don't think I'm at all ADHD...
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Like myself, who have gone through life wonder what is wrong with them and creating chaos in their own lives and the lives of their loved ones?
You know, letting the kid have a Coca-Cola at lunch will actually do wonders for their post-lunch concentration if they have ADHD. No Ritalin is required for most ADHD patients, but caffeine isn't as profitable.
Indeed, I wonder how many supposedly ADHD kids just really need a good thumping to keep them focused.
'Thumping' may be counterproductive.
Personally, I vote for 'More gym time'. Schools that eliminated gym in favor of more classroom hours saw no academic improvement and increases in disruption. Schools that instituted gym time* saw reductions in disruption/discipline issues.
You don't even necessarily need organized gym, you just need to get the kids *MOVING*.
As a result you both need fewer drugged kids, you also have healthier kids.
*Basically exercise. ANY exercise.
I don't read AC A human right
ADHD is an USA-only disease. Where I live (Italy) nobody knows of any comparable illness. And that's not because the halt system is lagging behind. Actually, is quite the opposite. Italian health care system is top 5.
There are posts for and against the efficacy/necessity for these drugs but isn't the real issue that most of these things people are trying to feel stimulated by, and interested in, esoteric ideas that don't fit nicely into the range of stimuli the hunter/gatherer homo-sapiens evolved to get excited about.
Does it not seem entirely obvious that a hunter/gatherer would rather be shooting zombies than searching for binary bugs in code, or a missing file in an archive?
Use the drugs if they help you and you feel confident that you aren't screwing up your liver but the diagnosis that these kids are diseased because they'd rather be catching frogs than parrot learning the menu commands of Microsoft Office, or a list of the Monarchs of Britain is sadly misguided.
Let me throw up a few other revelations:
There is less psychological illness in populations that live near parks.
People who get to walk in parks recover quicker from illness.
There is a statistical link between suicide and strong electro-magnetic fields.
Humans generally feel pleasantly excited when visiting an expansive wilderness.
Surprise surprise!
You can take a human out of the wild but don't expect him enthusiastically conform to the needs of industry or the propaganda of elites who follow Edward Bernays' view:
"The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest."
We humans were engineered by the eco-system we evolved in. We obviously struggle to conform to the engineering of 'progress'. Conform if needs must, just don't accept the labels: sick, lazy, delinquent, trouble maker.
We are humans: this stuff IS boring!
I have ADD you insensitive clod!
I didn't believe it was a real disorder either, my entire family was the same way. So I grew up suffering from ADD and never even knew it. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 30. Initially, I said there was no way I could have something that isn't even real. After thinking things over quite a bit and doing research (including talking to others with "adult ADD"), I began to be convinced that there really might be something wrong with me. Or at least "different" in a detrimental way.
So we began trying treatment, and the effectiveness of that treatment has convinced me definitively: ADD is real and I have it.
One of my great regrets in life is that I was not diagnoses as a child. If I could have started treatment before high school my life would have turned out so much differently. I don't regret where I have ended up, but I can recognize all the potential I once had to go so much further that my behavior sabotaged.
I am not defending the drug industry here, they are amoral capitalists and undoubtedly exploit children to maximize profits, but they also produce drugs that help people like me.
This is just a possiblility, I've no proof, but it's my default opinion until convinced otherwise:
Schools are held accountable for students' measurable educational progress. This is wrong since students and parents should be ultimately accountable for that. You can lead a horse to water...
So, if a student isn't educable by the means commonly employed, the school looks bad. The incentive is to shift blame by diagnosing the student with a disorder such as a learning disability or adhd, or some such.
Once there is something to blame other than the school, and they would say other than the student or the parent ( it's nobody's fault the student has a disability ) then the pressure is off. The student ends up not being educated to the same standards as other children, and the school can concentrate on rendering the 'normals' into cash.
...
It's distinctly different from the amphetamines. You are probably thinking of Adderall which is a mix of amphetamine salts (levo and dextro). Or Dexedrine, which is pure dextroamphetamine.
Ritalin is methylphenidrate, it's more analogous to cocaine.
tldr;
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I don't think anyone has mentioned ADHD-PI (Predominantly Inattentive). It's like normal ADHD but trades the hyperactivity for inactivity, which means its more difficult to identify.
I tried some adderall on advice of my sister and the result has been life changing. Anyone that heard I was on ADD meds would say "well geez I wish I could concentrate better, too." I gave some adderall to one of my friends to see if it would help him concentrate and guess what? All it did was get him high. YES ADHD misdiagnosis may be rampant but ADHD-PI diagnosis is largely absent.
Aside from saying that it hurts those who DO have it, to have this mass diagnosis on dubious grounds. Sometimes it has it's advantages. If you care about what you are doing, you can get so focused that you do a really good job. On the other hand, you can also be so focused you fail to see you are smashing the big picture. I remember one time I was at a meeting and someone pointed out in front of everyone that I had a lace shoe on one foot and a buckle shoe on the other. Without missing a beat I looked down and said "Funny, I got a pair at home just like them!" Thing is about ADHD, is it's often characterized by lack of ability to concentrate on mundane things and lack of emotional control. Children are not born with these facilities already developed. What if a lot of these kids simply never learned these because they were never encouraged to do so. By "Encouraged" I don't mean threats of punishments but finding ways of gaining your child's interest in something, and helping them to see the value of self control. Trying to teach these things via punishment can be like herding cats. They will flee at the first sign of trouble. Children are like that too. I know my parents were not the teaching type. There was screaming and abusive speech and cruelty. No wonder children of such parents never learn self control when their parents never bothered to do so? You MIGHT have ADHD if ...
Living for the moment, not being there when it arrives.
By the time you get there, you forget why you went!
You find it easier to program a computer than work with a copier.
If you need a bumper sticker that says "Been there, done that, forgot why".
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
Society is a pendulum, it swings one way, then as a counter reaction swings the other way and NEVER EVER just settles down properly. And TV LOVES it all.
The idea of sugar causing hyperactive kids. Know that one? Sitcoms LOVE the idea. But it is absolute 100% bullshit. Sugar does NOT make you hyperactive. Kids whose parents EXPECT the kid to become hyperactive, get hyperactive kids. Normal kids, don't.
ADHD and ADD has become the medical term for every "bad parents". It might have started out as a genuine medical diagnosis for people that have something very wrong with the make up of their brain BUT it no longer is. "Little Jimmie is a bit excited today, lets shoot him up". According to analyst the upcoming new handbook for the profession will make such diagnosis even more common. Even just being happy is wrong then.
The problem is that we want everyone to be the same. The no child left behind idea is one of the most horrid ideas ever to emerge from the human race. VERY close to the master race idea.
Rather then accept that some are better and some are worse, we pump everyone in the same mold and cut of the bits that don't fit.
Autisme, one of the old catch-alls. Bad? The tax office don't think so. They LOVE them. They hire them because everyone else, "normal" people, go insane checking forms over and over again. But that is what a lot of jobs, very important jobs need. Your son can't concentrate on more then one thing at the time? So? Why ask him to do so?
In olden days he would have gone to a special school were people knew how to deal with it and not demand he do more the one thing at the time. And he would have been employed as an accountant, made a highly decent job, married a wive who could multi-task and be reasonably content or even, god forbid, happy.
How do I know this? Because I worked for the taxman years ago in Holland and you couldn't move in the cantine for the weirdos who needed their lunch to be seperated or the flavors not mixing or god knows what more. Insane the lot of them, but highly productive nonetheless.
AH, but calling your son insane is unacceptable isn't it. He is bright you say BUT only on YOUR terms, as a person who can multi-task. If he can't, then there is somethingwrong that needs to be fixed at all costs. WHY did he cry? Because HE was upset or because he was upset you were upset?
No child left behind... no indeed. We just drag them along kicking and screaming. Everyone marching to the same drummer. Yuch.
Why should every kid be able to function in the same school system. Have you BEEN to school? Have you SEEN what counts as a success in regular school? Does our society only need Jocks and Cheerleaders? Sure, burgers always need to be flipped, but who is going to check their tax return?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have come to believe that so-called learning disorders are largely invented as methods of conformity to what are accepted as societal norms.
HEY! Get your mouse of the "Troll" option on that moderator drop-down and just hear me out.
I'm not arguing that the chemical states of the brain that create these conditions don't exist. What I'm saying is that they exist, but that they aren't necessarily "disorders".
I say this as someone who, as a child, was diagnosed with tourettes. I was unable to sit still for long periods of time, I shuffled my feet, tapped my hands, made clicking noises with my mouth... sounds like a problem, right? Actually, no: I'm a percussionist. All of these things were just music that I needed to get out somehow. If I couldn't find an instrument, I just used my body. Now that I'm older and have several musical instruments at my disposal, including a massive drumset, my musical needs are largely covered. Quack psychologists would say that I "grew out of my tourettes".
Something else of noteworthiness is how my mom always said that these so-called "ticks" went away whenever I was playing a musical instrument. DUH! Of course they did, because they weren't ticks at all, they were music!
Fortunately, I was never put on any psycho-affective drugs for this, but it haunts me to this day that I was told to "calm down". Honestly, that was the second-worst thing anyone could have done for me (the first being medicating me). I had to concentrate on my schoolwork and concentrate on shutting up; it just made things worse.
What if someone had been perceptive enough to tell my parents to enroll me in drum lessons instead of piano? Piano was OK, but it didn't really do it for me. What I had been confident enough to try out for percussion in band instead of (yawn) clarinet? Percussion was too easy, I thought; the education system told me that, when something comes easily, you're just being lazy and not trying hard enough. Who knows what heights I may have achieved at this point had I been encouraged as a child instead of discouraged? There are teachers and psychologists who will never be forgiven for their crimes against humanity.
So, it boils down to this:
Can't concentrate in school? ADHD
Doesn't socialize well with other children? Autism
Says silly things? Aspergers
Isn't enjoying school? Depression
Jittery and can't sit still? Tourettes
Heck, thinking back to what I was like as a child, I fit four of five of those categories! Wow, I must be real sick!
Yeah, I don't know, maybe they're just being kids. Just maybe, these children are the ones who don't fall in line with the narrow view of the education system, where every child learns the same information using the same methods in the same environment. Everyone learns differently and has a different way of understanding the world around them. Yet, education conforms everyone into a very narrow and specific skill set, no matter how unnatural it is for the students. This is later reflected in adult society, where are you are expected to shut up, be good little [ factory / office / sales / choose your monotony here ] worker and accept your pathetic wages without ever making a fuss.
Change your paradigm of school and of society. Listen to what Ken Robinson talked about at TED (or at the 1.5-hour Hammer Lecture if you're really interested).
Why are we accepting a system that funnels every child into such a narrow view of learning when every child learns differently? Why are math and science the deemed of utmost importance to every student? Why are things like dance, visual arts, musical arts, language, athletics, flying, competitive driving and so on and so on and so on not taught with the same vigor and importance or at all? Whoever decided that academics were the greatest form of human achievement, that it should be the endeavor of everyone and that anyone who doesn't fit this exact specification is deemed mentally ill?
A couple of times over the years, we have forgotten our son's morning dose of Adderall. Invariably he ends up in the principal's office and some well meaning administration staffer calls me on the phone to "come and get him because we simply can't do anything with him". I ask the staffer to get him a Mountain Dew and give it 20 minutes to work and that usually helps. Once however the staffer said "You have no idea" whilst describing his behavior. Oh, did she ever just punch my button! His dosage has been set so that the medication only lasts until the end of his school day so that by the time I get home from work, we have our normal little hyperactive child who can't concentrate, can't sit still, can't be quiet and doesn't stop until he falls asleep around 10:00. We can't medicate our child later in the day because he would then have difficulty falling asleep. I explained this to the exasperated staffer and added "Welcome to my world."
For those of you that claim that some parents over-medicate their children to make their own job of parenting easier, it really doesn't work that way. Often times, parents of ADHD kids have to work way harder than any other parent to keep their ADHD child from getting into trouble, to help the child focus on completing tasks such as getting their homework done and maintaining harmony with siblings.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
A 5 year old acting like a 5 year old or even a 4 year old shouldn't necessarily be "treated" by anything other than modeling and encoraging age-appropriate behavior.
A 5.0 year old not acting like a 5.5 year old ("average" Kindergarten age) is simply put not a problem.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Free drugs to treat a fake condition FTW?
must be right because he has a pretty authorative Slashdot handle.
Ritalin is a stimulant. If you don't have ADHD, it makes you more hyper.
I would wager most of the misdiagnosed kids were off drugs in a month, because the drugs would have made them a hell of a lot worse.
So yeah, a million kids misdiagnosed is bad, but the problem corrects itself.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
The difference is whether or not there is an actual chemical imbalance in the brain, or if the kid is just energetic. Ritalin calms ADHD kids while winding up non-ADHD kids, so the it's pretty obvious whether you got it right or wrong. If you can't tell, the kid's probably borderline.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
is the key, my diagnosis (at 33!) took nearly an hour with a psychiatrist going over family history, work history, personal history as well as tests and counseling sessions (nearly 5).
To say no one has this is false. Typically (as noted by the Psychiatrist and Counselor) if you are smart to begin with, your brain and personallity will find ways to cope.
Mine was the interwebs (love the comment internet pacifier) and with the rise of apps/cell phones/gameboys it became that much easier.
However, back in the dark ages, it was reading and sports. I was reading at a very advanced level very young and it certainly helped.
In highschool it was Mtn Dew, which, come to find out, caffeine/alcohol/nicotene is a way of self medicating.
Scoff all you want, but i was one of those who was told was just lazy all through school. Nice to know i have a treatable disease (SP) rather than just a personality disfunction...
I started to read it but moved onto something else.
My other sig is extremely clever...
I'm in my 40s so for those of you not old enough to know this, for the past 30 years in the USA, parents, schools and doctors have all been looking for the quick fix for "problem" kids.
In the 1980s psychiatric hospitals were the answer. The kids were all "crazy" and need psychiatric help. Some got put on medication. Some did not. But if you caused a problem anywhere, your butt was going to a psych hospital to get you "help".
In the 1990s, everybody was diagnosed as being hyperactive and put on ritalin.
Roughly since 2000, now the answer is that all kids have ADD or whatever term du jour they use for it. So maybe now instead of getting ritalin you get some other drug, but you're still on medication.
So since the medical community and the schools change their method of treatment and diagnosis every 10 years according to whatever faddish diagnosis takes hold, is it really any wonder that people question whether ADD/ADHD or whatever you call it exists? Because 20+ years ago these same kids were sent to psychiatric hospitals and nobody every said they were "hyperactive" or had "attention deficit disorder". And prior to the 1980s, NOBODY went to psych hospitals or got pumped full of pills for simply being bored.
Look I'm sure that some people really do have ADHD/ADD or whatever they call it and really do need medication for it. But do I think that most kids diagnosed with it have it? Nope.
mine, thank you very much. To those of you with NO DIRECT EXPERIENCE in this (i.e. childless, or "my friend's kid" or just willing to spout on whatever) let me say this: I accept your comments, but please be willing to change your thinking should you ever have kids with ADHD or similar developmental problems. I have a 10 year old son with ADHD. The most important thing I've learned is that every kid is different and talking about them in the aggregate is wrong. What works or doesn't work for my son and our family may or may not work with the next family. Raising kids is tough, and raising kids with ADHD/etc is harder still. I've heard the clucking of hens like all the blowhards I'm reading here. I've seen the stares and the looks from the ignorant who question my parenting and my choices. My message to you all: STFU! To those of you ignorant childless ones, a word of advice: if you have a friend or relative who has a child with ADHD or similar, try compassion. Try to understand that they have their hands full and that you really don't know shit about their situation. And try to keep your mouth shut and your ears and eyes open. If you think they are getting railroaded into medication then support them, encourage them, but stay out of their business. No matter how smart you think you are, understand that raising an ADHD child (or any child for that matter) is a humbling, though infinitely rewarding, experience.
Except for one sentence the article gives no clue as to whether there is sexual bias at work in the selection of the little victims here.
I've read many press reports about ADHD over the years and it seems clear that it is overwhelmingly boys who are diagnosed and that normal young male behaviour is being treated as pathological.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
and the Ritalin took all of the color out of life.
Exactly why I didn't take it. Being me, is honestly more important then being to able to focus on the damn lecture for the whole hour. Fortunately I had the intelligence to help me out(with my professional life), however as I agree with on the IQ thing, this isn't my case. But as another poster said, about having problems in other areas of life, well that's true. mainly in personal relationships, specially with women. Fading away and thinking about something else every few minutes, is not something most women find attractive about a guy. Most if not all thinks that it means I am just not interested(which to some degree is true).
Been there, done that. For a few years, I'd drink a coke to go to sleep. Stopped largely due to the calories.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I mean no disrespect to parents trying to raise a child who legitimately has ADHD or to teachers trying to teach such a child, but the idea of:
1) Segregating students by age
2) Expecting them sit all day
may work for girls, but it doesn't work for boys. I can remember clearly my first grade teacher (in the late 70s) talking with another teacher about which of us were quiet (=good) and which were loud (=bad). And she went through _each student by name as we were forced to listen_. And guess who was good? Nearly all of the girls and a minority of boys, the ones who were quiet by disposition. Why? Because those of us who were normal didn't want to sit still and be quiet all day.
As for age segregation, if boys see older boys modeling good behavior, they tend to do so as well, either because they 'want to grow up to be like them' or they know they'll get smacked if they don't.
Now, take an extreme version of a 'bad' kid coupled with the willingness to drug said kid for the sake of classroom harmony, and you have an obvious explanation for this report.
Why the hell are teachers making an ADHD diagnosis in the first place? That is something that requires a medical degree. In Oregon, it is against the law for the school staff to tell you your child has ADHD -- which didn't keep my daughter's principle from insisting she as not normal and needed to be medicated. Needless to say, we did not comply -- we transferred her to another school where they treated her like all the other kids and her "behavior problems" instantly disappeared.
Inattentiveness is not necessarily a sign of ADHD -- it can also be a symptom of depression, trauma, or abuse, as mentioned in this article.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
My daughter's birthday is just shy of the beginning of the school year, making her one of the youngest in her class. In fourth grade her teachers and counselors called me in for a meeting, said it was clear she was ADHD and strongly recommended I get her on Ritalin immediately. I refused. A few months later, another meeting, this time including the vice principal, same forceful recommendation.
Wondering if they were on to something, I took her to a specialist, but when he found out what the issue was, he gave me a questionnaire to fill out, and prescribed Ritalin without ever actually seeing the child. Apparently the medical profession gets a lot of these cases, and they rotate them through as quickly as possible.
This cavalier approach started alarm bells ringing, and I started doing research. As a result, I ended up getting her some *real* help (she is severely dyslexic) and continued to resist efforts by the school system to prescribe drugs for her.
In what turned out to be the final meeting with school offials (sixth grade), I brought in the results from two different specialists and gave an impromptu lecture on dyslexia, it's effects in the classroom, and how this pertains to my child. (Ok, I'm a geek, I probably overprepared.) Eleven expressionless faces looked back at me. When I finished, the principal said "that's all very well, but we are not medical doctors and are not qualified to evaluate this. The school system doesn't recognize dyslexia as a medical condition."
Ok, so let me get this straight. You decline to consider the results from specialists because you're not medical doctors. Yet you have diagnosed my daughter with a neurobehavioral disorder and prescribe drugs for her.
It didn't go well after that, and I pulled her out of school. She was homeschooled for three years and then was accepted into an art magnet school, where she thrives. And her counselors have never, ever, suggested she take Ritalin.
The point is, we're geeks here, we're more likely to have the resources and inclination to dig into the problem and expose this kind of corruption. Dick and Jane, IQ 95 and 97, don't have the wherewithal, and Dick doesn't have time from his backbreaking job at the sprocket plant, and Jane is pretty much incapacitated from her antidepressants, but like any good parents they really do want Dick Junior (IQ 93) to succeed, so when the school says Dickie has a problem and should take these pills...
What's insidious about this is that some kids (about 2%) really do need the drug to function. It's not the drug's fault. What started as relief for a genuine (although somewhat rare) disorder has turned into a huge cash cow.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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I was the little kid who preferred to draw rather than interact, due to being picked on all the time by kids during recess for being small and geeky. So, I was given time release ritalin, which I chewed due to a gag reflex. I literally have no memory of that chunk of my life, save for the occasional bizarre hallucination, and people yelling at me for having nervous tics. I got off it, and suddenly I had friends, I was social, I was doing great in school, and I could actually recollect what had been happening. I'm a grad student now. I can keep up with the schoolwork just fine, and have no issues with focus. According to my mom, who works in neurology now, the company that made Ritalin went around to schools and started giving heavily skewed presentations on ADD and ADHD to teachers, so that the teachers would tell parents that their kids has ADD/ADHD, parents would tell doctors that, doctors would administer a bullshit battery of tests, and kids would do kiddie meth and get stoned.
I am not going to say that no one is ever misdiagnosed but I think that economic models used here are not always the best predictors for medical issues and that studies like this have been used for years to try to cut funding for special education in public schools. It is honestly not that hard to tell the difference between an immature or young kid and one that has ADHD if you have some expertise with ADHD and I suspect if proper diagnoses was allowed by HMOs and PPOs there would be little problem. Having pretty bad dyslexia meant that I went to private school for kids with learning disabilities that did not effect ID (e.g. dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADD and ADHD) and I have got to tell you that the idea that the ADHD and ADD kids don't have an issue other than just being immature is insulting, a gross misunderstanding of the problem, and something kids with learning disabilities have had to fight with for years.
You need to be logical to be a good mechanic. Don't know why you assume IT is the logic department.
Yes you need to be logical to be a good mechanic, but a good mechanic needs to know a great deal about how an engine operates before they can apply that logic. Things that were learned and worked through a great amount of trial and error. Medicine is logical, but if you don't know what has been learned about the human body through painstaking research over many decades, then logic itself is useless.
Computers are machines that implement an abstract form of logic. They start with very simple principles and everything else is simply a consequence of boolean logic. AND, NOT, Load, Store, bam there you go. Everything needed to make a Core i7 processor (logically, not physically), and Ubuntu Linux. You could, in theory, derive everything in modern computer science from the basic principles. Practically speaking it's better to study what other people have already figured out, but in theory you can logic everything out yourself from first principles.
It's that aspect that separates computer science from other fields, and that aspect that seems to result in computer scientists who think they can logic out problems in every other field without having to actually learn anything about the field. Logic is all you need, right?
It reminds me of one of the stories from I, Robot, where a couple humans are manning a mostly automated power station on Mercury. The chief robot that runs the station decides, based on pure logic and a complete dearth of any knowledge, that flawed imperfect humans cannot possibly be the creators and thus rulers of itself or the power station itself. The humans completely fail to convince it otherwise, because the proof of human design of robots isn't on Mercury, and the robot (correctly) is not impressed by demonstrating the ability to assemble a robot from parts. Its logic was impeccable, but because it lacked relevant facts, its conclusions were utterly wrong.
The enemies of Democracy are
+1.
Like gp, I was also "almost" diagnosed ADHD as a kid, but my physician decided against it on the grounds that I was "too smart"; ADHD symptoms make kids do badly in school. But as school got harder, my performance did eventually slip terribly. I didn't need a diagnosis to "stick to me" -- the symptoms did that all by themselves. Depression set in, because there was no explanation for my behavior other than me being a shitty, lazy person with no "common sense" who was often admonished to just "stop being an idiot." But that's the dividing line between an illness and a mere maturity issue -- I *wanted* to do well. I was not consistently able to, in spite of an unwavering, categorically declared willingness to do so.
The real idiots are those who see only see one side of the "overdiagnosis problem" -- really, it's just a "diagnosis problem." Other than denialism, do these people have a solution to the difficulty in making the right call? Which side of caution do we want to err on?
Yeah, SSRI effects can be nasty. In my particular case, they have never approached anything resembling the nastiness of depression. Another anecdote - I don't personally know anyone whose life has been ruined by an unneeded Ritalin or SSRI prescription, but I have known many people whose lives have been turned upside down (in some cases, completely ruined) by an acute outburst of a previously undiagnosed mental illness.
Reminds me of the late 70's when my parents thought that my being bored in school was a mental condition and actually had my brain scanned several times with multiple drugs given while scanning. Mind you, I was 5 to 6 years old. Yeah, I do remember that time pretty well, and that pre-school and kindergarten class felt like babysitting. (I have extensive memory of the early years, it's saved my ass in arguments with the folks about things that have happened in the past)
I guess my point is that it seems like if you don't fit a certain criteria, then they find a way to try and twist you back into that criteria match.
I was lucky my parents weren't well off and could not afford medications. I was diagnosed as needing drugs, and I've had many different "authorities" trying to shove it down my throat.
I did take an SSRI once out of force... it almost felt like a neutralizer. It knocks the will out of you, and your just "there". If I had to take it for the rest of my life, I might as well be dead.
Just to clarify, there's nothing wrong with me. Once I got out of the clutches of my parents/schools/"authorities", I was a normal person with high learning skills. It was just not "their" way, so it had to change in their view.
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Make them do the ADHD test from South Park....
It's totally frustrating for those of us who do have ADD. No one believes you! Worse, my doc straight up told me that the patient makes the diagnosis. She said it's subjective to the patients accounts of historical behavior. Which led me to not take it very seriously... (at first)
Sorry, in english that means, if you tell a doc you have ADD, you do.
The reason I even saw a doctor about it because I had several friends who said I should "look into it." One just observed behavoir she who was adult diagnosed had, one (who is extreme w/ H) casually pointed it out. I did some research when going through my divorce, and found that it turns out, there isn't one classic symptom I don't have.
I often wonder if it is a problem or an evolutionary trait, I'm not retarted, though sometimes it may seem that way soemtimes! I often "blurt out" ideas. I work for a large co. where the CIO knows my name, but also appreciates that I bring energy to our team. That to me is fine enough. My daily job is "relaxed" so that chronic tardiness isn't an issue, and my taks vary rapidly keeping me engaged, w/ the freedom to post on /. when I want to.
One thing that is tough, is sorting out what information is relevant for the task at hand.
Imagine you're sitting at a loud bar with lots of people talking. Your best friend is right next to you telling you something, but since you've heard his voice your whole life, your almost "imune" to it. You hear every other voice clear as day. Hearing all conversations at once. Your friend is describing in detail how he is putting to gether a tent on a camping trip... It leads to a hillarious punchline, but the delivery gets ruined by his frustration of having to tell it twice....
I'm unmedicated, but it's for societies benefit. Imagine someone who is ADD & relatively intelligent. Now imagine that same person HYPERPRODUCTIVE. Pills made me check things off my to do list at rates that would be dizzying for most people, and frustrating to others.
People think it's just a few of these symptoms, but it's ALL of them, frequently that makes someone ADD.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
ne of my great regrets in life is that I was not diagnoses as a child. If I could have started treatment before high school my life would have turned out so much differently. I don't regret where I have ended up, but I can recognize all the potential I once had to go so much further that my behavior sabotaged.
One of my greatest regrets in life is that was mis-diagnosed with ADHD has a child. I got to spend around 5 years of school in decelerated classes, basically learning 4th grade reading, and 5th grade math over and over (despite being recommended for AP classes before the diagnosis) for around 4 years. Yes, I misbehaved ("acted out"), yes I was a pain in the ass, but this doesn't make a kid an ADD sufferer, or suffer from ANY mental illness. My neighbor had the same issues (he was two years older), and they stuck him in accelerated classes, he did fine. I had the same behaviors (and the same high IQ test scores), and got held back for years. Its arbitrary.
As for adult ADD, I'm skeptical. If you have a boring job, and a boring life, lacking in novelty and challenge your going to act... BORED. When I was a kid, I could sit around and read for 24 straight hours, completely dead to the world, same with drawing, etc... But classes made me climb up a wall, being forced to learn at the pace of the slowest children, and being penalized for having any slight sign of individuality and initiative, much less intellect. Why would the situation in adult life be any different?
Sitting in a cubicle for six hours a day is unnatural, its amazing we tolerate it at all.
Most modern emerging illnesses are nothing but a sign that something has switched, we are supposed to fit to society, and not visa versa as it should be. We subjugate the human condition to arbitrary social structures, this obviously causes tons of stress since our brain has not has the 100,000 to a million years needed to adapt to such hostile environments.
Instead of drugging ourselves and trying our damnest to fit in, perhaps we should take these "illnesses" as a sign that there is something wrong with our actual environment, and not us.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
This Onion article sums it up for me: http://www.theonion.com/articles/fcc-all-programming-to-be-broadcast-in-adhdtv-by-2,1841/
I grew up in a different videogame generation. I would play Super Mario Kart on the SNES for three hours, but then I would be outside playing baseball, backyard football, and king of the mountain*. Today's kids don't do that. What happens when one plays videogames all day is that the brain gets its release in a violent game lowering aggression levels, but the body has not exercised and it creates this strange fatiguing anxiety that makes one figity and unable to focus. These kids don't have real ADD or ADHD, which is very real, they are just crammed into an abnormal environment where their complacency is assured by their parents. If a drug is needed to subdue the child into this state it will be had by any parent from the doctor.
* Played on a hill where the person standing at the top is the king and tries to use his elevation to throw everyone else down and the try to throw him down to becoming king. Why did I feel I needed to explain that? Maybe because the younger generation never gets outdoors.
You seem to be saying that, because you don't know that the medication is shown to produce any particular neurological state which is correlated to this behaviour, the medication should not be given.
Your stance seems to be based on more theory than I think is necessary. My views on this are a bit more pragmatic. This is how I would make the decision: does the patient end up better with medicine, or better without?
That's really the bottom line, and physicians tend to be more willing to accept medications that are shown to work even if the mechanism is not completely known. So, you'll find that the ADHD medications are given to schoolchildren on school days but not on weekends or holidays, because they need the meds on school days but not holidays. And I tell parents that I don't focus so much on the diagnosis (whether their kid "really" has ADHD) as what difference they find the medication makes. When I had more time, I actually did double-blinded placebos (1 week with placebo, 1 week with half dose, 1 week with full dose, in random order, with parent and teacher each completing a questionnaire each week).
While I agree that we need to resist handing out prescriptions to every patient/kid who says they have ADHD, I think stopping it entirely it would unnecessarily harm many many patients who would otherwise benefit from the medication. You weigh the pros and cons (risk of addiction, other side effects) and make a decision, just like any other medical decision from "should I take Tylenol for my fever" to "should I get surgery for such-and-such a condition".
You're just choosing your wording to be provocative. Are you also disgusted at feeding willow bark to elderly invalids? Well, it turns out that aspirin, which is not quite the same as willow bark, has a proven benefit to mortality for people over 65, just as the combination dexamphetamine derivatives, which is not quite the same as the illicit speed traded in dark alleys, can make the difference between a kid going to college or not.
By the way, I wouldn't give ADHD meds to a 5-year-old; it's more that the diagnosis of ADHD is only made if the patient started showing symptoms around 5 years of age. (E.g. it's not ADHD if the problem only started at age 12 or so.)
As for whether ADHD is overdiagnosed: well, yes, you will get cases of kids diagnosed with ADHD who don't actually have it. But it doesn't happen as often as people seem to think, and it certainly isn't a case of "everyone in the top 2.5%ile is automatically diagnosed" type case as suggested by the summary. That was just to get page clicks for Slashdot --but, hey, please enjoy the ads.
disclosure: Family physician here, and I see several ADHD patients a month.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Finally, someone who cites sources in their articles!
I hate having to hunt down articles in Google Scholar, PubMed, or other places just to check out if the reporter is completely saying the wrong thing about the study.
The especially irks me with online media, where there's no real space limits and hyperlinks are a feature of the platform.
So, bravo Science Daily, and thanks for the links!
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
P.S. SSRI side effects are in fact nasty.
And indeed they are. I've been on a rotating variety of SSRI's for what they're now calling "treatment resistant depression", and I'm getting sick of dealing with people (doctors included) who are shocked when I say I haven't had sex in 6 years. No. Really. Not Interested. Not to mention the memory problems...
Ever tried ADHD drugs? They seriously give you super powers. You remember better, think better, and don't need to sleep. I was put on them about a year ago at age 32 and I seriously regret that nobody put me on them sooner. I've found them to not be addictive other than it sucks to go back to being tired and not as clear of thought. I don't even take them at the prescribed amount usually but instead keep the extras back for major project crunch times and long drives. I drove a roadtrip this summer where going both ways I drove non-stop for 24 hours without getting tired or fatigued.
The only negative side effect I've noticed is that you will eventually crash without sleep even with the meds and if you've pushed yourself into going non-stop for a week you're going to sleep all day and feel like shit. You really need to set a schedule so you can sleep on a regular basis.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
When I was depressed I could perform sexually but didn't want to. When I was on SSRIs I wanted to have sex, but couldn't finish the job. I could have banged away for hours and we'd have got nowhere but sore. Now I'm back off the drugs and I have no sex drive. Bloody nightmare.
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I am impressed. You are entirely correct.
My husband, with an IQ of at least 135 (it gets higher each time he takes the test), was sent to a psychiatric hospital in the '80's and put on Ritalin in the '90's. When he moved in with his father and stepmother, the first thing they did was to get rid of the Ritalin and establish structure in his day and give him plenty of exercise. Vast improvement.
Fast-forward a few years. We had our son evaluated for ADHD by an actual doctor who is actually trained in it, and his diagnosis was that the boy was borderline and could become ADHD soon. He said that my son might need medication in another year or two. Well, it's been over a year, and he's actually improved noticeably.
What did we do?
I homeschool him. Every one or two subjects, I set a timer for ten minutes and tell him to run around outside. Sometimes I lay down the law and make him do 'grunt work' that he doesn't feel like doing. Other times, I'll accelerate his learning to keep him interested. I keep him on enough of a schedule that he knows each day what is expected of him. I remove as much artificial flavorings and sweeteners from his diet as feasible, to the point where I make almost everything he eats, down to the dessert. Butter, milk, cane sugar, fresh or frozen fruit/veggies, whole-grain bread, brown rice instead of white... You get the idea, I'm sure.
To those above who get defensive about it, I acknowledge freely that some kids have real ADHD and they really need the medication. However, this article is about kids who are misdiagnosed, and I believe that the education system and modern culture is mostly to blame for that.
This.
Also, being smart but feeling a moron, gets you feeling angry, in turn getting you perscribed antipsichotics for "disadaptive behaviour", or mood stabilizers for excecive affectiveness. Needlesss to say, it's worse than SSRIs.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Yeah, while I'm sure you're well intentioned, please realize that these are extremely complex problems with no easy, simple, or single solution.
Please also be aware that this is a post on slashdot(IE not exhaustive), and that I said FEWER drugged kids for a reason. I fully acknowledge that there are REAL cases of ADD out there that drug treatment is the best for.
HOWEVER, if this was the case you'd expect most schools to have about the same amount of kids taking ADD drugs in each school, once you control for variable healthcare levels due differences in medical coverage for poor/middle/rich areas/schools. Instead you have a situation where some schools have single digit percentages of students on these drugs, and schools where well over half have them, and the parents of kids who aren't are pressured by teachers to get their kids on them at the slightest excuse.
My post about gym/exercise time is that, in actual studies, schools that had existent and effective exercise programs had, on average, substantially fewer children on ADD type drugs, fewer disclipline problems, and even higher academic achievement on fewer hours.
So what was the exercise level at your schools? What's your activity level now?
I don't read AC A human right
Glad you survived!
I'm so sorry, I can't imagine what that would be like to be commited, and "pulling the switch." I've been very lucky through the years, Iron like determination to "succeed" has been the only thing keeping me from taking a one time flight lesson. "Succeed" is pretty relative. I'm not totally poor, have a good wife, job, house that doesn't leak much, and car that is good enough. With the challenges we've had, I had to lower my expectations to call that success.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Negative effects of caffeine can show up much stronger in ADHD people - yet sometimes I enjoy a lot stimulating myself with it, even sometimes when working.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.