Welcome to Planet ADHD:
A Farce to be Reckoned With

My attorneys suggest I should plead the 5th in replying to this comment.;-)But your point does bring up something to think about for those of a progressive nature.

As a 37 year old who was on Ritalin for 8 years as a kid, they’d probably be OK if that’s the route you went down. But there are no guarantees. That said, you *should* push back against anyone that seems to be twisting your arm about medication, especially the teachers. It is illegal for teachers to even suggest ADHD or medication…

Thanks Mary Anne!

There is no science nor validity behind the diagnoses found in the DSM. Many were agreed upon by upper class white men as they washed their hands in the bathroom together.

Most of the people on the committees that cooked up all of these things took money from the drug companies; talk about a conflict of interest. Many of the diagnoses pathologize normal human respnses; the DSM 5 now states that you have Major Depressive Disorder if you grieve more than two weeks for the death of a loved one. As a retired hospital and nursing home chaplain I know for a fact that this is just pure bull feces of the worst kind. PTSD should not be a diagnosis. The emotions, feelings and behavior that this diagnosis supposedly describes are the normal human responses to experiencing horrible things. Psychiatry has no right to pathologize normal human responses to the vissictitudes of life.

As well as being a chaplain I am also a former high school teacher. I never once ran into a student that I would have labeled as having ADHD. As a student myself I never saw any kids in my classes from kindergarden to twelth grade that were ADHD. All of a sudden, in the 1980’s, this “diagnosis” popped up from out of nowhere. Of course, it was in the 1980’s that the drug companies began introducing all kinds of psychotropic drugs onto the scene here in America. I don’t think this was just a coincidence.

I support your choice to believe that you had ADHD but I don’t believe that it really exists. I spent too much time in the classroom to come close to even believing in it. I also know how terribly boring American classroom are, especially for kids who are raised on visual techonolgy, which holds and entertains one’s attention much better than an adult standing in front of the classroom droning on and on about this or that while everyone, including the teacher, are bored to absolute tears. Also, some parents today would rather be able to poke a pill down their active kid who acts up and sasses rather than learn some real parenting skills that are more productive for everyone. I just don’t believe in it one, little bit.

I should clarify – my main point – is that you seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Tylerpage, I was never diagnosed with ADD/ADHD but I’m absolutely certain I would have been given this diagnosis both as a kid and adult had the diagnosis been in fashion when I was child. My particular case, however, may have precluded a diagnosis as there was some emotionally traumatic events in my past to which I developed a convenient way of checking out, a habit that unfortunately lasted into adulthood.

I’ve spent many years reading psychiatry, have a MSW, did two years graduate/practicum work in outpatient psychiatry clinics, practiced psychotherapy including psychotherapy with young adults diagnosed with ADD and I have a research background, though not as extensive as some here including Michael Corrigan.

Validity is a research term. The current head of the NIMH as well as many mainstream writers/researchers in the major psychiatric journals have over the past two years basically admitted what many critics of psychiatry have known for decades; there is no validity to any mental health diagnosis for the simple reason that there has never been any reliable and measurable biomarker of any psychiatric illness, unless that illness derived from proven neurological diseases such as Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Huntingtons, etc.

I don’t see anything in Michael’s blog at this point that invalidates – using “validity” as a judgement – the experience of people who have trouble focussing/attending to tasks. If you find medication(s) helpful then that’s great. You should also, however, like all people prescribed any medication be given accurate information about the diagnosis, including it’s validity or lack thereof, the possible side effects of medication and alternatives. This is ethical practice and unfortunately the vast majority of people who encounter psychiatry/medical model don’t receive this standard of care.

I also think we need to be careful to not assume that criticizing the concept of ADD/ADHD as a valid mental health disorder is invalidating people who have received this label or struggle with emotional difficulties. Simply because people, especially young children with developing brains, have trouble attending does not mean there is a disorder or brain dysfunction. In some cases a child may have a learning disability but again this is not disease or disturbance of the soma. There is diversity of attentional states/learning styles and developmental ability. We should not be in the business of medicalizing these natural differences. A greater sensitivity to the fact that young boys develop neuro-cognitively/developmentally than girls is helpful. And having greater sensitivity, skill and diversity of approach to young children in the educational system would go a long way to helping get the assistance they need if they’re struggling with attending in school and/or disengaged from school.

My son, now 9, was identified in Grade 2 as being possibly ADHD. I knew this would happen eventually. My son since JK was very energetic and his style of learning – he needs to stand often while working or move/pace when working out a problem – easily flags him for the diagnosis. Interestingly, this behaviour was limited to school, which even by the DSM IV critiera – TWO settings need to be involved – makes the diagnosis questionable. When his teacher figured out with our input that this developmentally normal behaviour and that my son actually hears better and retains information better when allowed to move and not badgered to look directly at the teacher things improved dramatically. My son, now in Grd 4 is doing well. His GP and principal were initially convinced he had ADHD. He was lucky to not be so easily led into psychiatry and what helped him was a teacher who allowed input from us as parents and worked to engage him in a more sensitive/allowing/wise manner.

I know there are many people, perhaps yourself, who feel that medication is/was necessary and if you feel that way and it works for you then fine. We’d all do better, however, and I know I’d have done better as a young child, if children/parents were given greater support and effective psycho-educational practices that are easy to learn, take time/discipline and can have long-last positive impact on a child’s learning.

cheers,

I’ll give a quick summary of a story I’ve told before that illustrates what I think of the ADHD label in particular and psychiatry in general.

I once worked as a teaching assistant. For a short while I was a assigned to be with a 13 y/o boy diagnosed with ADHD. He was told that if his behavior did not improve he would be expelled. I was given no support. He was on ritalin. It did not work – but then the research shows that it stops working after a while as the brain compensates for it’s effects.

I found out that if one of the boys class mates played up then he did too, only he did it more. If the teacher knew how to control the class he was usually OK. So this looked like some kind of insecurity being acted out, maybe some kind of sibling rivalry?

The school had lots of young female teachers. It was a mainly working class boys school. The young teachers did not know how to relate to the boys very well so they played up. There were two ways of controlling the class, terrorize them or relate to them really well. One very experienced teacher had this down pat.

Class room control is a skill, and one that can be taught. It isn’t taught. Teachers on the whole have to learn it themselves.

There was a meeting about the child with the head, the special education needs coordinator, the parents and maybe others. I was not invited, yet I saw him more than anyone else in the school.

I would say that there were several things that could be done about the child’s behavior: talk over with the child why he was playing up, teach the young teachers some class room control skills, talk over what was happening at home with the family. Instead it was drugs, and then when they did not work pass the child onto another school to see what they could do and if that didn’t work then send him to what is called in the UK a Pupil Referral Unit, ie somewhere for naughty boys and girls to go.

I recently read that many working class children do not see the point of education. De-industrialization over the last 30 years has lead to high unemployment levels and most of the remaining jobs are now in the service sector. The idea that if you do well at school you will get a good job is no longer true for a lot of people. So children may well not see the point of sitting through all those boring lessons.

So my conclusions is that ADHD in particular and psychiatry in general has two functions:
1 to market drugs for Big Pharma
2 to make sure no one thinks about what is causing mental distress and behavioral problems.

Unfortunately psychiatry is fulfilling these functions with great gusto.

The guy uses a lot of pictures and big words to obscure a couple of very important facts. First off, the neuroimaging studies are averaged over groups of children. There is no specific pattern of activity that is shared by all “ADHD” children, or they’d use it for diagnosis. Smoke and mirrors. Also, the PET and SPECT scans measure glucose uptake, which is assumed to associate with activity levels. This only shows how the brain is being USED at a particular time, not what it is capable of or what structural defects may be present. As to the “smaller brain” arguments, these studies don’t control for stimulant use, which is known to reduce brain volume over time.

Beyond that, the author fails to demonstrate any REASON why the “ADHD” child’s activities are behind the developmental curve. We know from many years of research that kids’ normal development can look very different from person to person, and that these developmental targets are only averages with a large range of variation. For instance, it can be normal to walk anywhere from 10 months to 18 months of age. Speech can develop anywhere from 9 months to 2 years and still be normal. These are huge percentages of a young child’s life! Why do we expect all children to develop the same level of executive functioning at the same age? It’s also well documented that boys’ executive functioning develops later than girls, on the average. You’ll notice there is no way that this person offers to determine what is “normal” and “minimially functional” for any child at any age. He simply states that some kids are behind in that area of development. This is obvious and would apply to any area of development. It doesn’t make it a disease.

Finally, he completely fails to answer the vitally important question: does your intervention actually improve the long-term development in the areas you claim are deficient? As I explained above, the answer to this question is a resounding NO! Stimulant treatment doesn’t appear to improve any long-term outcome area of significance on the average when compared to non-treated ADHD-diagnosed peers.

A fancy presentation that proves exactly nothing. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. The Great Oz has spoken!”

—- Steve