The Drugging Of The American Boy

Why don't you read a fucking ADHD support forum and wonder whether the suffering caused by poor executive functioning/nervous system disorder is real?

Why didn't they mention how many more times you are likely to die in a vehicular accident than non-adhd users?

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=adhd&hl=en&as_s...

Google scholar for ADHD, why don't you realize that these ADHD articles are more akin to anti-vaccination articles?

Thank you.

As I've stated before, either ADHD is real, or psychologists have found the world's best predictive test for auto accidents.

People with untreated ADHD have 3x the likelihood of being in an auto accident. 56% rate of substance abuse. Think about that for a moment.

56%. Holy shit.

These are the people who instead of getting help, were told that they are "lazy" and "needed to get up off their asses." Except that advice didn't work, what it does lead to is depression and dependency issues.

Oh then there is the fact that there are large structural brain differences.

I won't disagree that ADHD is over-diagnosed at times. I am horrified with how easily some people get an ADHD diagnosis, your general MD should not be making that call. There are multitudes of proper psychological tests for ADHD that should be chosen from, a 30 minute patient interview should not be the sole determining factor.

A few years ago teachers complained that both my boys were too intense on the playground, 'diagnosed' with ADHD. Docs were eager to prescribe meds to make them conform.

There is something in our society wants to redefine normal behavior as pathology. Maybe to get you hooked and build revenue streams, maybe just to make you more pliable.

Fuck that.

Yes there are legitimate cases. But I've only experienced people who want to mis-apply the meds.

Nobody is saying that ADHD is not a real condition. The article is suggesting a lot of American boys are diagnosed with ADHD when they don't in fact have it. Imagine if 30% of people undergoing chemo for cancer treatment had never even had cancer.

I'd like to see what the rates are compared to other western countries. If its 5% in Canada and 20% in the US it suggests something is wrong

Instead of just talking about the dangers of a false positive, let's talk about the dangers of false negatives - of ignoring ADHD in children who do actually have it. ADHD is very treatable, but untreated, it can easily lead to other comorbidities that are much more difficult to treat (such as depression)

The most dangerous part of this is that it seems to imply ADHD is over-diagnosed in men (boys), when it's just as possible that ADHD is under-diagnosed in women (girls).

Girls diagnosed with 314.10 (Attention Deficit Disorder, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive) tend to exhibit fewer "traditional" symptoms of hyperactivity than boys with the same diagnosis. This isn't to say that the diagnosis is wrong - it's just that hyperactivity manifests in many ways - physical restlessness, "bouncing off the walls", etc. is only one.

> The interesting thing is I never asked any of these people whether ADHD is real. But their defensiveness is understandable. ADHD isn't strep throat—there's no culture, no test. To find out if you have it, or if your son has it, or if your daughter has it, you just need a human being to say so—a physician or a psychiatrist—and that makes some people skeptical

This describes the entire field of psychiatry. While there are certainly some people who are who would distrust the field, I would be very wary of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

And of all disorders, ADHD is actually significantly easier to test for systematically than most psychological/psychiatric disorders (such as depression). The main problem is that the tests to do so are very expensive (well into the thousands of dollars), and most insurance plans won't cover it.

> Ned Hallowell once famously said that stimulants were "safer than aspirin," a statement he has since backed off of. ("That's almost a preposterous statement for anyone to say," says Saltarelli.)

So, we have a complete lowbrow dismissal of what is actually a very reasonable statement. In the end, it's impossible to compare any two drugs for safety because there are so many factors that come into play, but to the extent that one can make a pairwise comparison, this is actually a very well-supported statement.