ADHD

Pediatrician and UCSF professor Lawrence Diller has issued the fourth of a four-part memoir on Huffington Post, recounting the rise of ADHD medicating and...

According to business intelligence firm GBI Research, the ADHD medication market will rise in value from $6.9 billion in 2013 to $9.9 billion by...

With school starting across the country, from the perspective of most kids, the fun is officially done. Summer by youthful definition is basically over. Meanwhile, parents nationwide are basking in this euphoric occasion. No longer will they hear every five minutes the astute yet shortsighted exclamation “I’m bored, there’s nothing to do!” Finally parents can switch their XM channel from Hits 1 back to Coffee House without being berated for being so old. But due to the popularity of the ADHD diagnosis, many parents also are debating whether to extend their child's ADHD summer drug holiday into the school year, or once again start drugging the child-like behaviors associated with the symptoms of the controversial ADHD diagnosis.

Hey Doc; I was wondering if before you see me the next time and tell my parents that I still need to be medicated for ADHD, you might consider a few things about me that you might not know. You see as a kid who can barely pick out an outfit that matches, make my bed, or wake up not hoping it's Saturday, I kind of have an active imagination. Like nearly all of my friends, I hate taking baths and I like to daydream. And when I daydream, I seem to not pay attention to what others are talking about. I kind of get lost in my own little world where rainbows do lead to pots of gold, leprechauns are real, life often feels like my favorite video game, and fart jokes never get old.

A systematic review of studies of stimulant medications for ADHD has concluded that the drugs should be used as a last resort, in rare...

When constructing the ADHD diagnosis, progenitors essentially say, "Let's study a group of people who do particular hyperactive, impulsive, and distracted behaviors that are associated with chronic and pervasive problems in school, social life, and work. If the person is an adult, the problems must be present in childhood and show consistency throughout development. We will call this group "ADHD" and study correlated biological characteristics and other associated difficulties. We will continue to tweak the criteria so that the diagnostic net falls on the people with the correlated dysfunctions and patterns of biology that we find in our research.

In what they describe as the first large-scale, long-term, nation-wide study of its kind, Danish researchers have confirmed that ADHD stimulants double the risk...

Even though about 10% of American children have been diagnosed with ADHD and most are taking stimulant medications for it, Boston Children’s Hospital researchers...

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has become the province of geneticists, neuropsychologists, and physicians. The prevailing view is that ADHD behaviors are caused by a neurobiological delay and that treatment must include medication and stringent management. While this general attitude may continue to prosper, there is increasing concern that we are proposing the existence of a medical problem when there are no biological markers or dysfunctions that reliably correspond with the behavioral criteria. It is vital that we more closely examine traditional beliefs about ADHD and review the shortcomings of commonly used treatments.

University of Toronto and Princeton University researchers take to Bloomberg View to discuss the findings from their large-scale, long-term study of ADHD and medicating...

Researcher Michele Tine of Dartmouth College’s Poverty and Learning Lab reports in the journal Frontiers in Psychology that 12 minutes of aerobic exercise caused...

The Melbourne Herald Sun reports that "The prescription of some atypical antipsychotics has more than doubled . . . Psychiatrist Dr George Halasz who has been vocal about...

Before we get to the meat and potatoes documenting how this headline is not only shocking but also accurate, you must know that a secondary goal of this blog is to test a few theories. I have been pondering these theories because it seems to be a mystery as to why (after more than two decades of whistleblowers warning the public) so many adults have not heard or heeded the news that ADHD stimulant drugs, which are not that different from cocaine, are extremely dangerous for kids.

The alleged “Prom day” killer, Christopher Plaskon, is a snap shot of the future result of Connecticut’s increased mental health services. The 17 year-old's defense apparently will be that his “mental health” caused his murderous actions – not the dangerous psychiatric drugs he obviously has been taking for some time.

Based on my experience both as a therapist and client in the mental health field, I have learned that when therapists or psychiatrists give you the following diagnoses all too often here is what they really mean:

The problem with instituting sweeping, costly and invasive mental health legislation is that there always are unintended consequences. The State of Connecticut, when passing Public Act 13-3, apparently didn’t consider that there are two sides to every story. And when it comes to “mental health” there most definitely is another side beyond the mental health we-need-early-intervention-to-help-those-suffering mantra.

On May 16, the New York Times ran an article titled Thousands of Toddlers Are Medicated for A.D.H.D., Report Finds, Raising Worries, by Alan Schwarz.  Here is the opening sentence: "More than 10,000 American toddlers 2 or 3 years old are being medicated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder outside established pediatric guidelines, according to data presented on Friday by an official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Dr. Mercola writes that "the high rates of psychotropic drug use among foster children and poor children is likely a direct result of drug...

On April 11, 2014, journalist Alan Schwarz published an article in the New York Times on this topic, titled Idea of New attention Disorder Spurs Research, and Debate. In the article Alan draws attention to the fact that sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) is being promoted as a new disorder  "… characterized by lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing."  He makes the obviously valid point, that the formalization of such an entity  "… could vastly expand the ranks of young people treated for attention problems."

An article in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry finds that the UK's new guidelines for treating attention and depression problems in children recommend a...

A new article by Peter Breggin, in the journal Children & Society, outlines The Rights of Children and Parents In Regard to Children Receiving...

In former times, children who were routinely inattentive and impulsive were considered to be in need of training and discipline. By and large, school teachers and parents provided this. In fact, the training was usually provided before the matter even became an issue. Today these children are spuriously and arbitrarily labeled as ill, and are given pills. At the present time the pharma-psychiatric system is being widely exposed as the spurious, destructive, disempowering fraud that it is. Organized psychiatry is responding to these criticisms not by cleaning up its act, but instead by increasing its lobbying activity in the political arena.

Mod Vive reports that "The rampant self-diagnosing of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is out of control. There is also an increasing amount of people...

Salon.com points out that "While data point to at least some over diagnosis (of ADHD), at least in boys, the extent of this problem...

Research in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology finds that "Over the last two decades, the increased use of atypical antipsychotic medications, often...