ADHD:  The Hoax Unravels

64
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.

Textbooks Provide Misleading Information on the Neurobiology of ADHD

5
When it comes to ADHD, some researchers suggest that medical textbooks provide inaccurate and misleading information.

Study Examines Overdiagnosis of Mental Health Disorders in Childhood

8
Are diagnoses of mental disorders among children and adolescents in developed countries disproportionate to disease prevalence trends?

Study Highlights Mental Health Consequences of Parent Emotion Suppression

4
New research suggests that when parents model emotion suppression strategies in social interactions, their children’s approaches to social engagement may suffer.

French and American Approaches to “ADHD”

2
It now looks as if the U.S. approach to mental health is fast gaining purchase in a country that formerly boasted a great, perhaps too sophisticated (Lacan et al.) psychoanalytic tradition, but also a holistic psychosocial tradition when dealing with psychological disturbance in children.

Researchers Highlight Pitfalls of Cognitive Assessment in Schools

2
Historical, current, and potential future complexities of cognitive assessment; a longstanding, controversial fixture in schools throughout the United States.
ADHD school boy

ADHD: Disempowerment By Diagnosis

32
Giving a diagnosis of ADHD can profoundly disempower students and lead to what psychologists call “learned helplessness.” Isn’t it time for those of us in education to reclaim our profession? Who are the teaching and learning experts? Doctors? Drug companies? We are! And if we don’t stand up—for our students—against disempowering diagnoses and harmful drugs, who will?

Our Letter to Lancet Psychiatry

7
This is the cover letter that Mad in America Foundation sent to Niall Boyce, editor of Lancet Psychiatry, requesting that the journal retract Martine Hoogman's study of "subcortical brain volumes" in those diagnosed with ADHD.

The ADHD Drug Epidemic: Addiction, Abuse, and Death

18
A new analysis of FDA data, published on September 10th by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today, reveals the dangers of the common prescription of...

Children with Autism may be Over-diagnosed with ‘ADHD’

5
A commonly used ADHD diagnostic measure may find overlapping symptoms in autism and ADHD, resulting in over-diagnosis.

The Vatican, Ritalin, and a Canadian Study of Long-term ADHD Outcomes

103
The Vatican conference on “The Child as a Person and as a Patient: Therapeutic Approaches Compared,” which took place on June 14 and 15 in Rome, was not really focused—as I had thought it would be—on the merits of medicating children for psychiatric disorders. The two Americans who had tirelessly campaigned for this conference, Marcia Barbacki and Barry Duncan, had hoped that it would serve that purpose, but the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, as it invited speakers, decided on a broader, more diffuse agenda.

New Study Finds Brain Changes in Newborns Exposed to Antidepressants

3
A fist of its kind neuroscience study, published this month in Cerebral Cortex, found changes in the brain electrical activity of infants exposed to SSRI antidepressants during pregnancy.

Adderall Use Associated with Increased Risk of Psychosis

29
Twice as many teenagers with ADHD experienced severe psychosis when taking Adderall, as compared to Ritalin, according to a new study.
drug dealers

Warning to Parents: Psychiatry is How Kids Get High and Die in the USA

42
Street drug dealers and stimulant-peddling doctors both get clients high and addicted for profit. So there is really no difference between what they do except that doctors are more ‘successful’ at it, since they enjoy many advantages over illicit dealers and can get away with doing it legally.

Linking Screen Time, Smartphones, and Stress Among Young Adults

3
New review ties increased screen time to increasing anxiety and depression among young adults throughout the United States.

About 1 in 100 Children Treated with Ritalin Experience a Serious Adverse Event

6
A recent Cochrane review has found that serious adverse events occur for about 1% of children and adolescents treated with Ritalin.

“The Overdiagnosis of ADHD”

68
The general theme, that various "mental illnesses" are being "overdiagnosed" is gaining popularity in recent years among some psychiatrists, presumably in an effort to distance themselves from the trend of psychiatric-drugs-on-demand-for-every-conceivable-human-problem that has become an escalating and undeniable feature of American psychiatric practice. But the implicit assumptions – that there is a correct level of such labeling, and that the label has some valid ontological significance – are emphatically false.
ritalin use in france

Countervailing Forces Against Ritalin Use in France

5
A new study in the journal Social Science and Medicine explores why French children take stimulants far less than children in the United States. The study looks at how particular forces in society, in concert with government agencies, became an effective check on stimulant marketing for kids in France.

Emotional Child Abuse Just as Harmful as Physical Abuse

6
Different types of child abuse have equivalent psychological effects, according to a study in JAMA Psychiatry. It has previously been assumed that emotional and verbal abuse could have different or less harmful impact on a child’s psychology than physical or sexual abuse, but research now suggests that these forms of abuse can be just as damaging.

Antipsychotics Associated with High Risk of Death in Children

16
A new study has found that children and adolescents taking a high dose of antipsychotics are almost twice as likely to die of any cause than children on other types of medications.

Improving the Efficacy of Mindfulness in Schools

70
New research examines factors that make mindfulness interventions in school most effective for adolescent’s mental health outcomes.

Researchers Reveal Misconceptions About ADHD

6
A new article explains common misconceptions about ADHD that are held by teachers and mental health professionals and may lead to overdiagnosis and overmedication in schools.
puritan

Stimulants: The Long View

12
When the ADHD literature speaks of scattered attention, it uses terms with historical resonance. Ever since the Puritans, reformers have attached high importance to the regulation of attention. But the standard treatment of ADHD is designed for immediate, not eventual, benefits. It conflicts with its own rationale.

The ADHD Drug Abuse Crisis on College Campuses

14
The abuse of ADHD drugs on college campuses has reached epidemic proportions, according to the authors of a recent review in the journal of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. ADHD drugs, like Ritalin and Adderall, have become so commonplace on college campuses that students abusing these drugs for studying, weight loss and partying have underestimated their risks. As a result, we have seen exponential increases in emergency room visits, overdoses, and suicides by students taking these drugs.

Enough is Enough Series, #5 – The ADHD Fiction is Exposed. The French Have...

76
The time has come that the fictitious ADHD qualifies for my ‘Enough is Enough’ series. It’s time to stop addressing pharmaceutical psychiatry on its own terms: its fraudulent and corrupt 'science,' its spurious 'evidence base,' and its imaginary psychiatric ‘diseases.’ I’m done with this. The evidence is in. Let’s get real. Psychiatry has become a profession of drug pushers. As a psychiatrist I am beyond troubled. Let’s get real.