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A Manufactured Epidemic - The overdiagnosis of ADHD is "national disaster of dangerous..."
National Review Online ^ | December 17, 2013 | Rich Lowry

Posted on 12/17/2013 12:08:46 PM PST by neverdem

The overdiagnosis of ADHD is "national disaster of dangerous proportions," says one M.D.

If at any time while reading this article your attention wanders, you may have ADHD. If you pause to check your e-mail sometime during the next three paragraphs, you should consult a doctor. If you fail to read this article all the way to the end, you should get on Adderall, Ritalin, or some other drug to treat your condition as soon as possible.

This isn’t quite the standard for diagnosing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, but it’s close. The New York Times ran a long exposé on how the drug industry has stoked the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD. The exposé contained a revelatory quote from Keith Conners, a doctor who has long advocated for the recognition of the disorder.

Conners called the overdiagnosis of ADHD “a national disaster of dangerous proportions,” telling the Times that the rising number of cases “is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels.” This isn’t bomb-throwing from an outsider, but a critique from the namesake of the Conners ratings scale widely used to evaluate kids for ADHD.

There is no doubt that ADHD is a legitimate neurological condition that makes kids (and those around them) miserable, that blights their potential, and that can be alleviated by prescription stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin. There also is no doubt that diagnosis and treatment of the disorder has run wildly out of control on the promise of an easy pharmaceutical fix to the natural rambunctiousness of childhood.

The six-year-old boy notoriously suspended from a Colorado elementary school on charges of sexual harassment for the offense of kissing a girl’s hand summarized the matter nicely: “I just have a lot of energy! I mean six-year-olds — they have a lot of energy!” No kidding. Our increasing unwillingness to distinguish between run-of-the-mill childishness — which, by definition, is heedless and frustrating at times — and a condition requiring pharmaceutical treatment is at the root of the ADHD epidemic.

According to the forthcoming book The ADHD Explosion, 19 percent of high-school-aged males have received a diagnosis. The numbers differ from state to state. In North Carolina, an astounding 30 percent of boys over age nine are supposedly suffering from ADHD. Overall, 6 percent of children and adolescents in the United States are on drugs to treat ADHD.

It’s a wonder more kids aren’t diagnosed with it, given the overlap between the description of the disorder and failings to which we are all prone. The New York Times points out that the American Psychiatric Association criteria for ADHD include “often has difficulty waiting his or her turn” and “makes careless mistakes,” hardly rare childhood behaviors. Lowering the bar further, drug companies sponsor online quizzes telling people they may have ADHD if they have trouble with things like “remembering appointments” or “getting things in order.”

The drug companies — for whom ADHD is a $9 billion-a-year business — target mothers with alluring ads suggesting their children will become little angels through the wonders of risk-free stimulants. Their kids will get better grades, spend more quality time with the family, remember to take out the trash, and shower everyone around them with good cheer. Who wouldn’t want their child thus magically transformed? According to the Times report, the Food and Drug Administration has constantly rebuked the companies for going beyond the evidence in selling visions of childhood Valhalla secured through the right drug.

Undertrained primary-care physicians and worried parents default much too often to the diagnosis of ADHD and to the answer of a prescription. The next frontier is adult ADHD, with the promise of a vast new pharmaceutical market made up of people deprived of ADHD diagnoses when they were children. Some of these diagnoses will be warranted and life-changing, but others will be overreach prompted by vague and dubious symptoms, like inattentive op-ed reading.

Sure, you got to the end of this article. But how about the next one?

— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2013 King Features Syndicate


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: add; adhd
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To: Cowboy Bob

You mean “Absent Dad/Husband Disorder”?


21 posted on 12/17/2013 12:50:40 PM PST by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: MrB

My husband and I were married five years before our first child, our son who has ADHD. We are still happily married and because he’s off for 48 hours at a time, my husband is very involved with our children. They even lift with him in the basement weight room. In fact, I can hear the wrestling in his bedroom right now. Our daughter is cheering for whoever is winning.


22 posted on 12/17/2013 12:54:38 PM PST by goodwithagun (My gun has killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy's car.)
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To: neverdem

ADD and ADHD are very real conditions that reflect the progressive loss of fully functional gray matter in the brain. Loss of gray matter is illuminated by mri in toddlers through to Alzheimer’s and other other neurodegenerative diseases. This pathology does not occur in other primates. ADD and ADHD are intermediate states in this progression. The higher incidence in males is related to the fact that testosterone increases the rate of iron retention (excess intracellular iron accumulation in the gray matter of both sexes). This iron accumulation begins with the first bottle of iron fortified formula milk and accelerates at puberty with increasing testosterone production.

kruss3 to wideminded

Your Science posting is “spot on” but the author for the magazine article may have missed the insights of the researchers entirely. Progressive Brain Iron loading is an accepted fact and acknowledged by these researchers. There is a monstrous paradox here. The dopaminergic cells within the substantia nigra pars compacta appear to be iron loaded within the cytosol with lipofuscin bound iron that contributes nothing the to the ordinary function of iron in catalyzing the formation of dopamine and the other neural transmitters. Lipofuscin bound iron may comprise up to 60% of the total cell weight before the cells dies. Dosing these cells with iron will produce more neural transmitters at the cost of accelerating the aging of these cells. The hypothesized iron deficiency is related to the ongoing deficient insulin mediated uptake of transferrin bound iron that is able to routinely catalyze the neural transmitters. This iron will be dribbled out of an iron replete liver every night for five years or more from a modern human (iron replete) who consumes no iron in his diet for the next five years. Our daily iron losses are believed to be about one mg and we can store up to 35 grams of excess iron in our liver and other tissues.

http://www.ajnr.org/content/33/9/1810.long

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24080959

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22392846

MFC is sensitive to brain iron in GM regions and detects age-related iron increases known to occur from adolescence to adulthood. MFC may be more sensitive than R2 to iron-related changes occurring within specific brain regions.

During typical development and aging, brain iron concentration is extremely low at birth but progressively accumulates until the end of the fourth decade of life with varying rates depending on the region. Starting from the first few years of life, the highest iron concentrations occur in the basal ganglia.

In Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, regional elevations in iron concentration are found, whereas iron is deficient in restless legs syndrome as well as in preliminary findings on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (8 – 11).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3371302/#R


23 posted on 12/17/2013 1:01:53 PM PST by kruss3
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To: neverdem

The New York Times points out that the American Psychiatric Association criteria for ADHD include “often has difficulty waiting his or her turn” and “makes careless mistakes,”

Heck, I see this in traffic everyday.


24 posted on 12/17/2013 1:05:24 PM PST by ealgeone (obama, border)
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To: neverdem

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/health/the-selling-of-attention-deficit-disorder.html?_r=0

The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder - the NYT article referenced in the article.


25 posted on 12/17/2013 1:06:20 PM PST by Madam Theophilus
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To: AppyPappy

Sesame Street. With the subject changing every 30 seconds.


26 posted on 12/17/2013 1:18:52 PM PST by firebrand
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To: neverdem

There are adults suddenly getting themselves diagnosed too, presumably for the disability benefits or other concessions.


27 posted on 12/17/2013 1:23:20 PM PST by firebrand
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To: MrB
You mean “Absent Dad/Husband Disorder”?

Never underestimate the creativity of women to get what they want....

ADHD was created so single women could keep their kids on a schedule.

28 posted on 12/17/2013 1:29:07 PM PST by papertyger ("refusing to draw an inescapable conclusion does not qualify as a 'difference of opinion.'")
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To: AppyPappy

They killed recesses to save insurance costs! That’s a major contributor to ‘ADHD’. When I was a kid we had a minimum of two recesses a day. A 30 min. at 10:30 and a 45 min. at 12:30 after lunch. They were unsupervised on open playgrounds with large asphalt areas, swings and what not. Kids would check out balls, bats, etc. to play during recess. Kickball, baseball, hide and seek, tag, races, etc. were all handled by the kids. One teacher was assigned to watch over the kids, basically, to minimize blood loss.

Now my son laments to me how he doesn’t have recess and school is ‘just for girls’. He’s right. They’ve done away with what boys, and girls too need. Vigorous exercise and free-association gaming.


29 posted on 12/17/2013 1:48:43 PM PST by Justa
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To: Hojczyk

Without a doubt, this is one of the major benefits of homeschooling. Kids can sleep in or take naps as needed.

Many children are deeply sleep deprived and are basically being given speed to deal with it.


30 posted on 12/17/2013 1:58:37 PM PST by Valpal1 (If the police can t solve a problem with brute force, they ll find a way to fix it with brute force)
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To: papertyger

“Never underestimate the creativity of women to get what they want....”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I kinda reckon that’ud be tough advice to follow seein’ as how there ain’t no way to OVER estimate it, it bein’ limitless and all that!


31 posted on 12/17/2013 2:45:12 PM PST by RipSawyer (The TREE currently falling on you actually IS worse than a Bush.)
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To: RipSawyer

Let’s just say I was using “creativity” as a synonym for less savory terms relating to pathological self-interest.

After all, we are talking about the segment of the population that consistently tries to cloud the fact and evade the responsibility that only they can legally obtain the death of their own children.


32 posted on 12/17/2013 3:12:13 PM PST by papertyger ("refusing to draw an inescapable conclusion does not qualify as a 'difference of opinion.'")
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To: neverdem

IMHO, and to be incredibly politically incorrect, I believe a lot of this can be traced to the disappearance of corporal punishment.

When I was a kid and before I could be trusted to make reasonably correct decisions, I was usually good because I lived in fear of what would happen if I wasn’t. And it worked, as it always has for centuries.

Again, IMHO, much of this problem could be solved by, as my Dad used to say, “the application of the hand of wisdom to the seat of knowledge.”

It seems to me that today there’s a serious lack of behavioral consequences.


33 posted on 12/17/2013 3:18:35 PM PST by upchuck (I can't stand people that don't know the difference between 'than' and 'then.' Their so stupid...)
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To: neverdem

Video immersion, lack of real punishments, constant fructose intake, rapid fire enticements, low sleep, low exercise, low expectations.


34 posted on 12/17/2013 3:50:36 PM PST by polymuser
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To: papertyger

In other words you were being creative?


35 posted on 12/17/2013 3:53:54 PM PST by RipSawyer (The TREE currently falling on you actually IS worse than a Bush.)
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To: neverdem

Kids with ADHD get extra benefits ... or “mom” gets ‘em...


36 posted on 12/17/2013 5:21:05 PM PST by GOPJ ("Remember who the real enemy is... ")
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To: Gaffer
Medical records are being digitized; not for medical expediency, but rather for government identification and adjudication.

This, and what you described in reference to the use of pharmacology histories being used to deny fundamental rights (especially the RKBA) have been stated goals of the gun grabbers for a while.

The truly 'paranoid' will not seek medical aid if they need it because of the consequences, although many will get caught up in the sweep with millions who were hastily diagnosed as either a means to more income for someone or a matter of convenience.

Children are naturally rambunctious, curious, and often seem a little scatterbrained because there is so incredibly much to learn about. They're fascinated.

Medicating that out of them is criminal, teaching them self discipline is hard, and requires parental attention, something a horribly self-involved society has little time for, especially when we live in a world replete with things designed to grab your attention (TV, radio, ipod, advertising, are all in constant competition to sell you something, from a car to an idea.)

It is hard to get away from the hustle and bustle for an adult, imagine being in a room full of other children who are competing likewise for the attention of the adults around them.

37 posted on 12/17/2013 5:57:11 PM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: grania
What is happening today is that often the most creative, artistically and intellectually, are having that creativity and potential for excellence destroyed by pharmaceuticals.

Statistically, the little New England town of Stepford has the highest percentage of prescriptions filled.

38 posted on 12/17/2013 6:57:26 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: neverdem

I barely made it through the title, never mind the article...


39 posted on 12/17/2013 7:01:20 PM PST by King Moonracer (Bad lighting and cheap fabric, that's how you sell clothing.....)
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To: Cowboy Bob
Isn’t it interesting that ADHD doesn’t exist in other countries?

Of course not! Other countries don't have:

Bush
Republicans
Tea Party

/s

40 posted on 12/18/2013 12:01:58 PM PST by BwanaNdege (Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. J.F. Kennedy)
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