The Drugging Of The American Boy

Your response is vague apologism for irresponsible journalism justified on a minor technicality. The articles is so stupidly charitable to it's own worldview(in the sense of lying) and omitting so much from the other side that it is ridiculous.

You are wrong to think that these people deserve "serious consideration", when the article is written itself to produce knee-jerk reactions "The drugging of the american boy....", as if we had IV Heroin plugged to these kids. Article allows for the opposition, most people who have random opinions about ADHD for no apparent reason other than to have an opinion.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23382575 (Is ADHD a Risk Factor for High School Dropout? A Controlled Study.) tells us that " Conclusion: Participants with ADHD were significantly more likely to repeat a grade"

Do you know the cost of high school drop outs or grade repeats to society? What about to the kid, who suffers massive self-esteem loss and under-values himself? Why is the author not more responsible? The modern era brings us new journalism-contrarian-chic, stylstic articles that irresponsibly lend fuel to very harmful world-views(such asADHD is not serious)

What drugs, exactly, and to which boy? Is the cost of not-treating much greater than the cost of treating? The article is merely an appeal to pop-trash trendy world-views, and does not deserve much of a response at all

As someone who has gone through tests and been diagnosed with ADD, I think I understand the frustrations, and it definitely does not "feel" normal.

Not being able to hold onto a thought for more than 3 minutes, or having to deal with potentially being distracted by every little thing that happens around me does not feel like the normal state of affairs. Trivial tasks can take me hours instead of minutes in some situations.

Unfortunately I'm currently in a country that doesn't allow me to get medication for this (and previously I was in a country that believes that ADD/ADHD magically disappears when you turn 18), but I still have good memories of how much it helped me get through middle school and high school (I went from almost never finishing my math homework to being able to finish everything in class in only half the allotted time).

Neurobiological sounds like psychological to me. Unless you're saying doctors are measuring things like dopamine activity or doing brain MRIs to diagnose ADHD.

There's no good evidence that ADHD is not the result of psychological conditioning. For that matter, even if you measured abnormal neurotransmitter activity or brain scans in suspected ADHD patients before diagnosing them, if you looked at animal psychology studies where pathological behavior has been induced by conditioning, I'd be surprised if there weren't abnormal brain scans and neurotransmitter activity there, too. The neurochemical/neurophysical measurements that might provide "evidence" of a non-psychological etiology are invalid if those physical aspects of the brain are themselves affected/modulated by neurological conditioning/development.

If your solution to any problematic "neurobiological" symptom that responds well to a certain drug is to prescribe that drug, because if it responds to a drug it must be a chemical/genetic problem, then everyone will be on a drug eventually. Probably several.

To me, as an adult, getting a diagnosis on ADHD was a godsend. However, after a couple of years, I see the drug's affects waning. I can also see how damaging this dependency creation can be for children.

Fortunately, when I was a child back in India, ADHD was virtually unknown (probably the case today as well). Most of the time, my parents chalked off my inattention to "lack of discipline" and were happy as long as my grades were good. I found the coursework very easy (despite studying for only 1-1:30 hrs a day) and topped most of my classes.

University here in he U.S wasn't hard either. My problems started once I started working. Couldn't code continuously for more than 15-20 mins at a time. Things got boring very quickly once I got the "aha". I couldn't hold a lot of program state in my head. I was always searching for that "flow" people often talked about.

Adderall really helped me. I use it very sparingly these days (especially on days that I have to code some important pieces) though.

Bottomline, looks like this is purely genetic and fixing the dopamine pathways isn't exactly like curing malaria, you can juice things up but the brain will want more. Parents can choose to give it to their children but they'll suffer some time down the road. I'd rather let the kid enjoy childhood and help him in other ways (exercise, note-taking, engaging activities etc) and put him in a reasonably good path to success. Let them take drugs if necessary once they've wised up as adults.

I'd like to read more about the structural brain differences, if you've got links.