ADHD

The FDA approval of the Monarch eTNS device is the latest form of psychiatric-inspired child abuse. If not stopped, it will afflict millions of children in unimaginably damaging ways. It has inspired us to form Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children (SPAC!) a new international advocacy organization.

A new study, published in the JAMA Psychiatry, investigates the effect of stimulant ‘ADHD’ drugs on the brains of children and young adults. The...

A simple, one-time visit to an unfamiliar counselor resulted in my diagnosis of ADHD. That same visit started my avalanche of drug abuse. I was 19 years old when I was falsely diagnosed with ADHD, and it forever changed my life.

In just two decades, pointing out the pseudoscience of the DSM has gone from being an “extremist slur of radical anti-psychiatrists” to a mainstream proposition from the former chairs of both the DSM-3 and DSM-4 taskforces and the director of NIMH. In addition to the pathologizing of normal behaviors, another explanation for the epidemic — the adverse effects of psychiatric medications — is also evolving from radical to mainstream, thanks primarily to the efforts of Robert Whitaker and his book Anatomy of an Epidemic. While diagnostic expansionism and Big Pharma certainly deserve a large share of the blame for this epidemic, there is another reason.

Revealing the false information provided about psychiatry should cause any thinking person, patient, thought-leader or politician to wonder: “how many otherwise normal or potentially curable people over the last half century of psych drug propaganda have actually been mis-labeled as mentally ill (and then mis-treated) and sent down the convoluted path of therapeutic misadventures – heading toward oblivion?”

Lancet Psychiatry, a UK-based medical journal, recently published a study that concluded brain scans showed that individuals diagnosed with ADHD had smaller brains. That conclusion is belied by the study data. The journal needs to retract this study. UPDATE: Lancet Psychiatry (online) has published letters critical of the study, and the authors' response, and a correction.

The FDA just approved sales of an electrical device called the Monarch eTNS to be used on the brains of children diagnosed with so-called ADHD. The device “sends therapeutic signals to the parts of the brain thought to be involved in ADHD,” according to the FDA press release. “Therapeutic signals”? Really?

Despite little evidence for benefit, and substantial risk of harm, antipsychotics are commonly prescribed to children diagnosed with ADHD

Somewhere along the line we have lost the understanding that kids come in all shapes and sizes. Some kids are active, some are quiet; some kids are dreamers, others are daring; some kids are dramatic, others are observers; some impulsive, others reserved; some leaders, others followers; some athletic, others thinkers. Where did we ever get the notion that kids should all be one way?

At the risk of stating the obvious, ADHD is not an illness. Rather, it is an unreliable and disempowering label for a loose collection of arbitrarily chosen and vaguely defined behaviors. ADHD has been avidly promoted as an illness by pharma-psychiatry for the purpose of selling stimulant drugs. In which endeavor, they have been phenomenally successful, but, as in other areas of psychiatry, the hoax is unraveling.

In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined being drawn into a story of intrigue involving my own government’s efforts to hide, from the public, reports of psychiatric drugs associated with cases of murder, including homicides committed by youth on the drugs. But that is precisely the intrigue I now find myself enmeshed in.

Instead of hope and enthusiasm for their futures, too many children now grow up believing they are inherently defective, and controlled by bad genes and biochemical imbalances. They are shackled by the idea that they have ADHD and then subdued by the drugs that inevitably go along with the diagnosis. Unless something intervenes, many of them will go on to pass their days on Earth in a drug-impaired, demoralized state.

Afraid of facing me in court, the state gave up entirely and a young man was freed from involuntary ECT treatment. It was a total victory. Meanwhile, the Psychiatric Industrial Complex is finding more subtle ways to inflict electrical energy upon the brains of children labeled with ADHD.

Over and over again, we have shown that additional nutrients positively affect behaviour and mental states. This research offers further evidence that children with ADHD, mood dysregulation and symptoms of aggression should be given the opportunity to try micronutrient treatment FIRST.

Findings suggest that treatment not only fails to reduce the severity of “ADHD” symptoms in adulthood but is associated with decreased height.

Simple changes such as keeping a calm home environment, limiting media distractions and enrolling your child in sports will help a child who is inattentive or having problems focusing on his or her school work. They are also useful for any child and can even prevent inattentiveness in an ever-more-distracting world.

New review ties increased screen time to increasing anxiety and depression among young adults throughout the United States.

Neuroscience researchers find no differences in brain connectivity between children with diagnoses of autism, ADHD, and those with no diagnoses.

From Curious Mind Magazine: Jerome Kagan, one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, believes that the diagnosis of ADHD is a mere...

Twice as many teenagers with ADHD experienced severe psychosis when taking Adderall, as compared to Ritalin, according to a new study.

Medicating children for a host of mental disorders has become very popular in some parts of the USA. More than 8 million kids from 6 months to 17 years of age are on pharmaceutical drugs in this wonderful country. We lead the world in drugging youth for behavioral, cognitive and attention issues. We are once again #1. But I would like to share with parents as well as adults working with children a few not so readily available facts related to medicating kids for behavior issues.

Are diagnoses of mental disorders among children and adolescents in developed countries disproportionate to disease prevalence trends?

In a philosophically rigorous article, Spanish researcher Marino Pérez-Álvarez examines the logic of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Calling ADHD a diagnosis, i.e., something with the capacity to explain the behaviours that it describes, is like saying the headache is causing the pain in my head or the inattention is caused by inattention. Scientism has turned ADHD from a vague, difficult to pin down concept into a fact of culture masquerading as a fact of nature.

What Dr. Frances calls "massive mislabeling" is not the assignment of psychiatry's spurious labels as such, but rather what he calls the overuse of these labels. This notion of conservative, careful and accurate diagnosis is a common theme in Dr. Frances's writing, but in fact, it's an empty exhortation, because the criteria are inherently vague and ill-defined.