From Medscape: “The title of a recent article in The New York Times asks, “Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong?” How would you answer this question? My response would be a robust “You’re darn right we have!”
I am a member of a shrinking cohort of primary care pediatricians who practiced before the phenomenon of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) appeared on the landscape. I have always been troubled by how the handful of hyperactive grade schoolers I was seeing in the 1970s could mushroom into something that prompted the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention to report last year more than 11% of American children had been diagnosed with ADHD.
View ADHD not as a diagnosis but rather a collection of observations of a patient’s behavior that should serve as a warning label. This doesn’t mean we should completely rule out stimulants as a therapeutic option. However, medication should be considered a temporary step while more definitive steps are being taken to narrow the discrepancy between children’s own resources and the environment in which they find themselves.”
