Tag: Stimulants

Leading ADHD researchers outline four mistakes that turned ADHD from a description of behavior into a medical disease.

Adults receiving ADHD medications and therapy frequently experience adverse events that interfere with employment and daily life.

When comparing kids with the same symptoms who were either diagnosed with ADHD or not, those who received the diagnosis had worse outcomes.

I have found that trauma is frequently at the root of many eventual psychological and medical issues. Medications often only worsen the disconnection caused by trauma.

Schools and hospitals have become dangerous places for children and adolescents. They should stimulate children, not pacify them with speed on prescription.

Our new discussion series aims to explore what we do and don’t know about safe withdrawal from antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and stimulants.

Sami Timimi discusses the lack of findings for a genetic or neurobiological basis for ADHD, and explores the short- and long-term effects of stimulant drugs.

Both the idea that there are some characteristic brain-based abnormalities for those diagnosed with ADHD, and that the medications used have specific properties that target a disease process—like a chemical imbalance—are false.

We now spend over twenty billion dollars a year on treatment for something called “ADHD.” For that amount of money, we could pay the mid-career salaries of an extra 365,000 teachers or 827,000 teachers’ aides.

From Pamela Wible MD: "In 1990, even I was severely depressed as a first-year med student. So my mom (a psychiatrist) mailed me a bottle...

From The Daily Wire: "...nowhere is this tendency to medicalize the human condition more apparent, or more dangerous, than with children. As most people know,...

Study of students without an ADHD diagnosis finds that stimulants (Adderall) have little impact on cognitive performance.

From CNN: According to a new study, exposure to unprescribed ADHD drugs has increased by more than 60% among U.S. children since 2000. "The study, published Monday...

From Medscape: While policymakers and members of the general public are justifiably focused on addressing the opioid epidemic, there is another epidemic that may be...

From The Michigan Daily: Netflix's new documentary "Take Your Pills" examines the historical, cultural, social, and systemic factors that have shaped the ever-increasing rates of...

From The Conversation: University students are increasingly using "smart drugs," including amphetamines and Modafinil, to enhance their academic performance. These drugs tend to be addictive and...

In a work of quite remarkable scholarship, Ohler has traced how an enterprising drug manufacturer realised the potential of methamphetamine and managed to sell it to the High Command as a very valuable but entirely harmless drug that would allow soldiers to do without sleep for days.

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

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.

Yesterday, the FDA approved Pfizer's “QuilliChew ER” chewable methylphenidate for ADHD in children as young as six. “CNS stimulants, including Quillivant XR, QuilliChew ER, other methylphenidate-containing products, and amphetamines, have a high potential for abuse and dependence.”

A number of news outlets have been reporting on a review of modafinil, labeled the new "smart drug," this week. The review in question summarized the recent literature on the drug but others have claimed that the authors underestimated potential side-effects.

Individuals diagnosed with psychotic disorders have an earlier onset of psychosis if they have previously been exposed to prescription stimulants, according to new research currently in press in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.