Posted on 04/13/2025 12:56:59 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
With diagnoses at a record high, some experts have begun to question our assumptions about the condition — and how to treat it.
In the early 1990s, James Swanson was working as a research psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, where he specialized in the study of attention disorders. It was a touchy time for the field. The Church of Scientology had organized a nationwide protest campaign against the psychiatric profession, and Ritalin, then the leading medication prescribed to children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, was one of its main targets. Whenever Swanson and his colleagues gathered for a scientific conference, they were met by chanting protesters waving signs and airplanes overhead pulling banners that read, “Psychs, Stop Drugging Our Kids.”
It was true that prescription rates for Ritalin were on the rise. The number of American children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. more than doubled in the early 1990s, from fewer than a million patients in 1990 to more than two million in 1993, almost two-thirds of whom were prescribed Ritalin. To Swanson, at the time, that increase seemed entirely appropriate. Those two million children represented about 3 percent of the nation’s child population, and 3 percent was the rate that he and many other scientists believed was an accurate measure of A.D.H.D. among children.
Still, you didn’t have to be a Scientologist to acknowledge that there were some legitimate questions about A.D.H.D. Despite Ritalin’s rapid growth, no one knew exactly how the medication worked or whether it really was the best way to treat children’s attention issues. Anecdotally, doctors and parents would observe that when many children began taking stimulant medications like Ritalin, their behavior would improve almost overnight, but no one had measured in a careful, large-scale scientific study how common that positive response was or, for...
(Excerpt) Read more at dnyuz.com ...
I have always thought ADHD was just a way of turning being a regular boy into a medical condition because boys don't act like girls.
Two years of ADHD in a medical record score SS payments for parents.
Yes-we economists (or most of us) think that people respond to incentives. More funding if there are more ADHD cases!
It's all becoming clear now.
My friend told the school to go to hell when they said their daughter should be on Ritalin. She became a doctor.
My dad had the cure for ADHD. His leather strap. Work liked a charm. Had his four kids straightened out in no time. I look back now and thank him for that.
“I have always thought ADHD was just a way of turning being a regular boy into a medical condition because boys don’t act like girls.”
SPOT ON!
At first the parents scote all the Ritalin (amphetamines) for themselves, then they file for social security?!!??!!
I’ve been told my whole life that I have ADHD-hold it I just saw a squirrel!
Although Mom and Dad were not fans of the quack, Benjamin Spock, I was a big fan of Star Trek’s, Mr. Spock.
That’s all it is...being a kid or later in life being an adult and living. You can diagnose everyone for ADHD. That’s how broad the symptoms are.
It’s pure BS and massive funding for big pharma.
I have a friend in his 60’s who work constantly to try it. It helps you to concentrate. If a kid forgets his dose, they give him....caffeine. Same effect.
I just drink coffee.
I have a friend in his 60’s who we work constantly to try it.
Schools aren’t supposed to tell parents about taking ADHD medication. They aren’t healthcare providers.
Thanks for posting - my son was (finally) diagnosed with ADD as a 30-year old, he had three consultations.
He is on a very low dose of a Ritalin-type drug and told me for the first time in his life he’s able to calm and slow his mind down and concentrate on his work without getting constantly distracted by anything and everything. For him, it seems to work.
ADHD is an acronym for BEING A BOY stuck in a BS feminist indoctrination center run by commies and chomos. Give boys a competitive outlet and PE. BUT there is too much money being made.
This is the correct analysis.
That should send a chill through any one thinking about putting their child on drugs.
Friend of mine has three kids, their first was scholarly, started reading at age three and was always top of the class. Their other two were normal students, started reading about age six and were B students. She once told me that she and her husband had to come to the realization that there was nothing "wrong" with their second and third children. They were just different people with different interests. Once they figured that out and tried to give their kids some balance rather then push them to get top grades they were all much happier.
That meant pulling their book worm away from his studies so he would get outside as well as sticking books into their other kids hands and telling them to read.
My parents were divorced when I was very young.
The court “awarded” me to my mother.
I had no real father figure till the end of the third grade.
I had been kicked out of so many public schools( for fighting), my mom was looking to put me in a private military school, no public schools would let me in.
She decided to divorce my step father and dumped me on my biological father and his new family. He didn’t use a leather strap. But I settled down, my option was to move back in to the emotional hell my mom was to live with.
I didn’t want to do that.
She used to beat me all the time and I’d just laugh at her
so I had my share of physical punishment aside from the emotional crap.
Boys need Dads!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.