… and now they’re coming for the Ritalin!
These American staples, the backbone of our thriving pharma-economy, are under assault by scientists who claim they don’t work for most people and that they can do terrible harm.
What’s next? Our babies’ antipsychotics??
January 30th, 2012 at 8:11PM
Of course everyone with half a brain already knew Ritalin and adderall were bogus treatments. As noted in the op-ed, there was plenty of data from decades of military use which established stimulants to have a universal effect and not some special effect on a supposed pathological subgroup. I did not have to read the Times to know these things, curious minds already were well aware.
I’d go even one step farther than the author of that op-ed, though. He claims that the fMRI studies on ADHD are given to flawed interpretation – specifically noting that these studies find a disordered condition but fail to properly investigate the origin of that condition and thereby leave intact the supposition that this is a congenital disorder. I think that’s still off the mark.
There simply is no such disease or disorder, the entire diagnosis of ADD/ADHD is bunkum. This becomes obvious when one looks at what children have done historically. Prior to the industrial revolution and massive urbanization, children didn’t sit in a school room all the time. Our society is subjecting all children to increasingly structured – and increasingly asinine, rote, unthinking “teach to the test” garbage ‘educational paradigms’. There is more and more scrutiny of children’s behavior (words and actions) – they are looking at everyone all day, everyday. Discipline in schools is increasingly idiotic and draconian: “zero-tolerance” for drugs, disruption, simple possession [rather than wielding] of a pocket knife, more cops in schools, charging 5, 6, or 7 year-olds with sex offenses [they are too young to understand sex].
In this ill-conceived, authoritarian approach to education necessarily leads to labeling increasing numbers of children as unable to follow the rules in one way or another [ADD/ADHD/conduct disorder/oppositional-defiant disorder].
As the author of the op-ed pointed out, insisting these things are ‘brain diseases’ and treating them with a pill relieves all parties of responsibility. He wants to keep the idea of physically based disease, yet seriously rethink etiology and treatment. My take is that there is no disease – all of this is purely subjective social construct – and seriously rethink how education of the nation’s children is conducted.
Psychiatry is fraud for profit.
Clin. psych. is well meaning folks who believe their own obviously flawed understanding of the world. [One excellent example in current play: Lack of job/financial security produces desperation, many people are suffering now due to this cause, therefore we cannot cut funds to deliver talk therapy even in this time of ‘fiscal austerity’. This is a non-sequitur; talk therapy does not restore job/financial security, thus it does not remove the suffering. Duh.]
January 31st, 2012 at 8:08AM
it’s crazy to feed kids developing brains these kinds of drugs and there are massive amounts of misdiagnosis but the truth is that there are a number of children who are truly hyperactive (and often suffer other issues of impulse control) and we don’t yet know why except that it has nothing to do with romantic notions of children being less free or having to endure the foolish trials of No Child Left Behind.