This is entirely criminal. ADHD is bogus. How in the world did teachers manage hyperactive children before the invention of the term ADHD and the billions of dollars made on DRUGS to treat it. It should be noted that the US rank highest when it comes to the use of ADHD drugs. I'll see if I can find my sources.

My next to the oldest grandson was very energetic and needed to burn that energy off like it was when I was a child. Instead of telling him to go outside like I was told to burn that energy off he was prescribed Ridalin. My Son and Daughter-n-Law complained of him being ADHD. All he wanted was some attention and they thought their video games were more important. As he grew he would come and visit and I would take it upon myself to refuse to give him that medicine. The reason was not to spite my children it was because we had picked the grandkids up one day and Caleb seemed far off somewhere else. He sat right beside me and I asked him if he felt alright. He quoted "it's just the medicine pawpaw". That night when he went to bed I did not give him his dose as my children had said to. The next morning he came out of his room smiling and I knew my grandson had all his faculty's to him. Some say I was wrong for not giving him the Ridalin some say I was right. All I know is this child has grown up and is fixing to graduate High School and will attend College in the fall. His attitude toward what is happening in the school system is outstanding. A young John Galt in the making and not with Ridalin. Maybe some drugs are good and needed, but to control a child because he wants just a little attention. If that were the case most of us would have been dope addicts by the age of 13.

My son was considered a problem child in 5th grade because his attention span was not good enough. They wanted to put him on Ridalin. He was BORED! He couldn't understand why he needed to study the same thing for three weeks running. I fought that school system for his entire education and was told by his councellor that he would not graduate, so he took it into his own hands to get a GED and join the Navy before his school year was over. The councellor also said my son would never understand math. Just over 1 1/2 years later, he graduated from sonar school, having survived, along with 5 other young men out of the original 100. His courses were ---Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus. I saw the manual for teachers in the Washington State system back then. Of the seven atributes the children were supposed to learn, one was "ambiguity". When I asked the teacher about this, she said it meant the children must have an open mind. THIS is what has been teaching our children for 3 generations!

You would not believe how much the schools press for these med. It is hard for parents to resist, when some schools tell them to take the kid home and bring him back medicated.
Our daughter had severe allergies, and was under treatment by an allergist, a family friend. They wanted to evaluate her at school for ADHD. I was not happy, but knew what the doc would say. So, they tested, and said she was not. I already knew that a third of another 3rd grade class was medicated! So, after they tested, I presented them with a letter from our doctor, who really let them have it. He knew our daughter, as she sometimes stayed over with his daughter. He said kids with allergies will move around, a natural reaction to trying to get their breath. They are not even aware why they are doing it. Once the allergy is under control, they can sit still. The doc also wrote that he was sick of parents demaning Ritaline because the school said they should. He said they were rarely ADHA.. He said maybe one who had been sent was actually ADHD. He then told them that the issue was teachers who did not know how to teach, not kids with ADHD. We had been told that kids who did have to go to the office for Ritalin meds, were to be sent so as to keep some privacy. What actually happened in that school, was a teacher calling out their names and being told to go get their Ritalin. Talk about labels! In our town, some high schoolers were stealing their younger siblings Ritalin, then selling it at school. Then they wonder why teens use drugs.It should also be mentioned, that in most of the school shootings, the perps were on psychotropic drugs, or withdrawing from them, after being through values clarifications classes as well at school.

I wonder if they'd be willing to share them with me? I think I'm starting to develop a behavioral problem.

I think the disparity in the numbers might be the result of different approaches taken. In Medicaid land they will not pay for treatment other than drugs. So, as the doctor you see the "consumer" for 15 minutes then give them a prescription. For the vast majority of private insurance this is pretty much the same thing. This only changes when you get to the really high end insurance and or parents paying out of pocket for actual therapy. So, while the non-medicaid number could be a lot closer to 0 it will still not be 0 since there are plenty of plans out there that will not cover therapy then there are the final small end of the wedge kids who actually need drugs to get by on a day to day basis. Trust me, if your kid was actually schizophrenic and there was a drug that could do an even reasonably good job of keeping their torment under control you would not think twice about it. The sad fact is that for a much smaller percentage of the population that the doctors would like us to believe it is, their are kids whose brains are pretty broken. Also, the sad part is that things have not changed that much for a really long time. I remember pretty well back in the 80's Tipper Gore telling parents that if they didn't like the way their kids were acting they should put them in a psych hospital till their insurance ran out, then hand them over to the state.

I am very happy that I grew up at a time that these drugs did not exist. as I recall some of my friends who were somewhat disruptive were so be cause the were bored in school and low and behold when they were sent to the rapid advance or special pupil programs i.e. letting the skip from 7th to 9th grade they started to perform much better. they were just a little smarter than most of us. maybe the idiots in charge just can't understand that they have been holding the brightest of the lot back so these youngsters just don't know how to deal with the predicament they are forced into. government schools are the problem, not the children who are forced to attend them.

I advised a friend to not put his slightly rebellious son on Ritalin. (But I had no shrink bona-fides.)The zombified kid was set on the path to becoming an M.D. Once he got off the stuff his rebel soul asserted itself and he dropped the M.D. track, and wound up as a maker of movies and a prof. of drama and cinema at a California University. And he hadn't even read about Howard Roark yet.

It appears to me that psychotropic drugs are being used in order for parents to tame their kids into submission so that they are easier to deal with, thus relieving the parents of having to take time away from their interests and spending it with their children.

Think about this.

What if those providing the treatment have played a roll in creating the problem? In your own mind, is that at all plausible? I'm talking about what happens at the biological level. Who profits when doctors treating kids on medicaid prescribe more drugs...just for starters?

"Why have medical professionals and parents settled for a method of labeling and drugging so disempowering and so defeated?" - Because they are just the pawns... Being a pawn eventually leaves one defeated.

Drugs = control and power. And it doesn't matter if you are the drug taker or the parent being duped! Either way they are controlling your life.

Are there legitimate cases? Absolutely. I have two adopted nephews whose mother was on drugs while pregnant. They are slowly being weaned off psychosomatic drugs while they are taught self-control, but without the drugs they are completely incapable of managing themselves.

What I see is a society which in large measure is no longer willing to go to the lengths necessary to take care of their children, so they resort to drugs and daycare to replace love and discipline. We shouldn't be surprised at the results - tragic though they are.

From Comfortably Numb to Blissfully dumb. In the USSR, vodka was the drug choice to ruin the young. Here in the USA, nothing better than a new chemical concoction in the form of a pill.

(music) One pill makes you nauseous and one pill makes you small....and the white knight is talking backwards......feed your head.

I also recently read an article that cited 25% of college students take ADHD drugs to help them study for higher test grades.