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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.
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.
"Throwing drugs down their throat to turn them into the kid that is more convenient and calm"
If the kid doesn't have ADHD, the drugs will likely do the exact opposite.
According to my girlfriend (who's got ADHD), ritalin is a stimulant. It makes non-ADHD'ers hyperactive.
The reason is that in an ADHD brain, the 'control'-part isn't working hard enough, making you very impulsive. And if you act on every impulse, you're hyperactive. So, you have to stimulate the 'control'-part of the brain, keeping the impulses in check.
Somebody without ADHD has got the exact same impulses, but is just better in controlling them. Unless the brain is overstimulated by something like ritalin..
So, no, the kids aren't turned into zombies. On the contrary.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Methylphenidate (Ritalin) was first synthesised in 1944. It was identified as a stimulant in 1954, and has been used to treat children with ADHD or ADD, known at the time as hyperactivity or minimal brain dysfunction (MBD) since the 1960's.
I have two younger siblings who are on ADHD medication. They are lively fun people to be around when they aren't on their medication (usually during the summers when they aren't at school because my parents believe the medication will magically bring about better grades). On the other hand, they are zombies and very different people when on the medication. It kills their appetite and they are much less outgoing, it is a very noticeable difference.
It's a stimulant, re-uptake inhibition has never been classified as a depressant action.
Also Ritalin works on dopamine not serotonin.
You may be thinking of SSRI anti-depressant drugs like Prozac or Celexa, though those are not depressants either.
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!
(Disclaimer: Speaking to the American medical system here.)
Doctors are also on the hook if they assess and fail to diagnose things like depression. If they aren't sure they're pretty likely to throw you some low dose SSRI's. The side effects are mild and not life threatening, and they tend to make everyone feel a little bit happier. They leave it up to you to take (or not take) that medication, but they're covering themselves. If symptoms persist then they'll take a more serious look at it, but typically they'll write you a scrip and send you on your way.
I was almost diagnosed with ADD as a kid. My doctor leveled with me and my parents and said that wether or not I was actually suffering from real ADD the typical course of action would be to give me basic happy pills then wait and see what happened. We decided not to pursue medication at that time so we agreed to just pay attention to it and check back in after a while. Eventually the symptoms just went away, I stopped being an idiot and paid attention in school. Parents can be super pushy to get their kids fixed, I imagine a lot of Doctors just don't want to deal with taking a stance in such an ambiguous position and push the pills to keep the families happy.
In hindsight I'm glad I never received the formal diagnosis. Like your example, those diagnoses tend to stick with people (wether they are accurate or not). I would probably have been lumped in with the special needs kids, and that would have stuck with me all the way through high school.
"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."
I'm sorry, but having worked quite extensively for the NHS in the past, a family almost entirely consistening of medics (2 aunts, 2 uncles, my father, my sister) and plenty friends who are medics *and* drug reps, I can tell you that is complete and utter twaddle.
The idea that doctors are routinely getting off their heads on "coke and hookers" at the drug company's expense has zero grounding in reality.
Yes, it is. (Though in a sense, it's actually both.)
The mechanism of action of methylphenidate, just like every other drug in the amphetamine analogue group, is to increase dopamine and norepinephrine levels by blocking their reuptake. It also increases the release of these neurotransmitters, but isn't nearly as potent in this regard as, say, methamphetamine or cocaine. Both of these effects are stimulatory, a fact that can be easily discerned by giving it to animal models or humans. Small doses create a feeling of energy and mental clarity, while large doses create a high distinctly different from that of depressants. Overdoses can provoke stimulant-induced schizophrenia, most likely due to the high levels of dopamine.
That said, in the treatment of ADHD, the proposed mechanism of action is that the areas of the brain controlling impulse control (presumably, the frontal lobe) are naturally depressed. Increasing overall levels of stimulation in the brain causes this area to achieve a normal level of stimulation and activity. Obviously, because this area is inhibitory, methylphenidate in this case has an overall depressant effect, but make no mistake -- methylphenidate itself is definitely a stimulant. Just because a drug can exhibit paradoxical psychoactive effects doesn't mean its standard classification is different; it just means that it has idiosyncratic paradoxical effects in a subset of the population. In this case, that happens to be therapeutic (as opposed to, say, fatal in the case of some antipsychotics and antidepressants).
- IHAADIP (I Have An Advanced Degree In Psychology)
The Freelance Wizard
Said by someone who obviously has no family member with schizophrenia and/or manic depression. You have no idea what you are talking about. If you think psychopharmocology is useless, then I dare you to attempt to live with someone who has both schizophrenia and manic depression and is not taking any medications. The meds are not perfect but they are a damn sight better than the alternative. And there is no talking someone out of these sorts of ailments. Brains don't always work properly, they get specific problems just like any other organ.