Is ADHD real?
Ask Tom Edison.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison
“In school, the young Edison’s mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him “addled”. This ended Edison’s three months of official schooling.”
Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures.”
The Quacks pasting these kids with ADHD are eating SSDI alive, and everybody is getting the bill.
Robert Whitaker spent 25 years covering the Psych beat as a science reporter.
from his book Anatomy of an Epidemic
http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Epidemic-Bullets-Psychiatric-Astonishing/dp/0307452425/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364847430&sr=1-1&keywords=anatomy+of+an+epidemic+by+robert+whitaker
Pg 245
The Disability Numbers
There are no good studies yet on the percentage of “early onset” bipolar patients when they reach adulthood, end up on the SSI and SSDI disability rolls. However, the astonishing jump in the number of “severely mentally ill” children receiving SSI speaks volumes about the havoc that is being wreaked. There were 16,200 Psychiatrically disabled youth under 18 years old on the SSI rolls in 1987, and they comprised less than 6 percent of the total number of disabled children. Twenty years later, there were 561,569 disabled mentally ill children on the SSI rolls, and they comprised 50 percent of the total. This epidemic is even hitting preschool children. The prescribing of psychotropic drugs to two-year-olds and three-year-olds began to become more commonplace about a decade ago, and sure enough, the number of severely mentally ill children under 6 years of age receiving SSI has tripled since then, rising from 22,453 in 2000 to 65,928 in 2007 (98)
Moreover, the SSI numbers only begin to hint at the scope of the harm being done. Everywhere there is evidence of a worsening of the mental health of children and teenagers. From 1995 to 1999, psychiatric-related Emergency Room visits by children increased 59 percent. (99)
The deteriorating mental health of the nation’s children, declared U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher in 2001, constituted a “health crisis.” (100) Next, colleges were suddenly wondering why so many of their students were suffering manic episodes or behaving in disturbed ways; a 2007 survey discovered that one in six college students had deliberately “cut or burned self” in the prior year. (101) All of this led the U.S. Government Accountability Office to investigate what was going on, and it reported in 2008 that one in every fifteen young adults, eighteen to twenty-six years old, is now “seriously mentally ill”. There are 680,000 in that age group with bipolar disorder and another 800,000 ill with major depression, and, the GAO noted, this was in fact an undercount of the problem, as it didn’t include young adults who were homeless, incarcerated, or institutionalized.
That is where we stand as a nation today. Twenty years ago our society began regularly prescribing psychiatric drugs to children and adolescents, and now one out of every fifteen Americans enters adulthood with a “serious mental illness.” That is proof of the most tragic sort that our drug based paradigm of care is doing a great deal more harm than good. The medicating of children and youth became commonplace only a short time ago, and already it has put millions onto a path of lifelong illness.
98: Social Security Administration, annual statistical reports on the SSI program, 1996-2008, Social Security Bulletin, Annual Statistical Supplement, 1988-1992
99: Pediatric Academic Societies, Pediatric Psychiatric admissions on the rise,” May 16, 2000 press release
100: D. Satcher, Report of Surgeon General’s Conference on Children’s Mental Health (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2001).
101: B. Whitford: “Depression, eating disorders and other mental illnesses are on the rise, Newsweek, August 27, 2008
ADHD Diagnosis and drugging is making kids sick, crippled, and dead.
I do not have ONE, not ONE of my friends who does not claim that any of their children DO NOT have ADD and ADHD.
As far as I am concerned it’s an excuse for their children doing poorly in school.
It make me sick.
Look up what these ADHD drugs are. Put Ritalin, Concerta, and Adderall (and just about any other psych drug too) in the search box.
http://lamplightersoftware.com/dsm.php
What percentage are raised by strangers?
I know it’s tough out there economically, but would the stats be different if mom stayed home with the kids during the early years?
I’m wondering when some state will finally have enough of this nonsense and prohibit prescription of these drugs to minors by doctors outside of very, very strict criteria.
Note that this is already being done in a way in New York City, by restricting the dispensing of opioid drugs at city hospitals. But this would take it further.
It is generally required that an MD, DO, PA, OD, DPM, NMD, ND, DVM, DDS, or DMD, some Psychologists, clinical pharmacists, Nurse Practitioners and other APRNs can write prescriptions.
However, because states license all of these professionals, it seems that the states should be able to limit what drugs can be legally prescribed to children, by requiring much more than just “because” as a reason.
“A gram is better than a damn.”
A.D.D. stands for Attention Deficit hey lets go ride bikes!
I have taught for almost 8 years at the elementary level. I cannot tell you how many kids have come through my class that were on adhd medicine. Of those, I can count exactly 2 that, in my non medical opinion, benefited from the medication in a way thay actually helped them to focus and perform better in school. I also cannot tell you how many times parents have tried to get me to “diagnose” their children so that they could take that recomendation to some quack doctor somewhere in order to get their kid put on meds. I refused to do it every single time. I tell them that I am not a doctor and only a medical professional can make that determination. Apparently, they do receive some kind of gov’t money if their kids are labeled adhd and they also receive free breakfast and lunch at school. Over 80% of the kids at my school eat free. It’s all about the money and not having to actually parents their children.
As for teachers not wanting to deal with unruly kids, most of the ones that I have known understand the difference between normal rambunctious kids who just need a chance to get rid of some extra enery and kids who are actually detrimental to others who are trying to learn. My principal said once that when she taught in the classroom her classes consisted of about 30 kids without discipline problems. I said, “Yeah, but y’all were allowed to whoop their little behinds when they got out of control. “ She saw my point.
Corn
Wheat
Milk
Chocolate
Food coloring
Artificial sweeteners
Hormones
Fast-paced TV
They tried to tell me my son had ADHD when he was four. I told them he was a four-year old boy and they should mind their own business while his mother and I raised him.
He’s now an Eagle Scout, a fine student and a wonderful young man. They’re trying to medicate the boy out of the little boy and it’s a disgrace.
We didn’t have time (and money) for all this ADHD crap, so we chose to spank instead.