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"ADHD" facts
“If there is no valid test for ADHD, no data proving ADHD is a brain
dysfunction, no long-term studies of the drugs effects, and if the drugs do not
improve academic performance or social skills and the drugs can cause
compulsive and mood disorders and can lead to illicit drug use, why in the
world are millions of children, teenagers and adults…being labeled with
ADHD and prescribed these drugs?”
Dr. Mary Ann Block
Author, No More ADHD
The information provided here has been drawn from many sources and is only a
fraction of the available knowledge. Armed with even this limited information,
the ADHD controversy will be far less confusing and dangerous for parents, and
certainly more predictable.
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For all of psychiatry's pretensions to being a science, the ADHD scientific
"discovery" process was literally a vote by a show of hands at an
American Psychiatric Association (APA) Committee meeting in 1987. Inserted
into the American Psychiatric Association's billing bible, the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), within one year, 500,000
American children were diagnosed as ADHD sufferers. Despite the total lack of
objective proof of its existence, millions of children have been harmed through
the use of this diagnosis. Today in the U.S., over 6 million children are
taking mind-altering drugs because of no more than an "expert's"
fancied ADHD opinion.
In the 1990s in the U.S., federal government incentives helped increase
the number of children diagnosed with "ADHD": low-income parents
whose children were diagnosed with "ADHD" were given more than $450 a
month.1 In 1991, U.S. federal education grants also provided schools
with $400 in annual grant money for each child diagnosed with
"ADHD."2 The number of children diagnosed with this
"disorder" soared again. By 1997, the number of children labeled as
having "ADHD" had risen alarmingly to 4.4 million.3 Today,
the figure is closer to six million. ADHD is actually a stigmatizing psychiatric label. Once labeled, your
child is considered to have a psychiatric disorder, in fact to be mentally ill
or diseased (euphemistically expressed as mentally disordered). This
label can negatively affect a child's and others' perceptions of
himself/herself, both now and in the future. For example, children diagnosed
with "ADHD" and prescribed stimulants, could later be ineligible to
serve in the armed forces. In 1998, the U.S. military discharged more than
3,100 recruits with psychiatric histories, pointing to a rise in
"medication" and treatment of ADHD and other "behavioral
disorders" as a reason for discharge.4
Increase in ADHD Diagnoses
in the U.S., 1987, 1997, & 2001
In 1998, Florida child psychiatrist, Dennis Donovan said, "ADD is a
bogus diagnosis. Parents and teachers are rushing like lemmings to identify a
pathology... Our current pathologizing of behavior leads to massive swelling of
the ranks of the diseased, the dysfunctional, the disordered and the
disabled."5 According to Beverly Eakman, author of Cloning of the American
Mind, "These drugs make children more manageable, not necessarily
better. ADHD is a phenomenon, not a 'brain disease.' Because the diagnosis of
ADHD is fraudulent, it doesn't matter whether a drug 'works.' Children are
being forced to take a drug that is stronger than cocaine for a disease that is
yet to be proven." Dr. Joe Kosterich, Federal Chairman of the General Practitioners' branch
of the Australian Medical Association, said, "The diagnosis of ADD is
entirely subjective... There is no test. It is just down to interpretation.
Maybe a child blurts out in class or doesn't sit still. The lines between an
ADD sufferer and a healthy exuberant kid can be very
blurred."6
Increase in ADHD
Prescriptions
in the U.S.,
from 1997 to 2001
In March 1998, James Swanson of the U.S. National Institute for Mental
Health, and one of the foremost proponents of ADHD as a disease, addressed a
meeting of the American Society of Adolescent Psychiatry, admitting: "I
would like to have an objective diagnosis for the disorder [ADHD]. Right now
psychiatric diagnosis is completely subjective... We would like to have
biological tests—a dream of psychiatry for many years."7
Simply put, a child is mentally ill with ADHD if a psychiatrist thinks
he/she is, or is of that opinion. In his book, Ritalin Nation, Richard DeGrandpre, Ph.D., states,
"One study, reported in the journal Pediatrics, found that 80% of
the children thought to be hyperactive, according to home and school reports,
showed 'exemplary behavior and no sign of hyperactivity in the office.' This
finding is consistent with numerous studies showing, and dozens of newspaper
articles reporting, considerable disagreement among parents, teachers, and
clinicians about who qualifies for a diagnosis. This can only raise questions
about the existence of ADD as a real medical phenomenon since it is these
symptoms alone that are the basis of the diagnosis."8
Increase in Number of
Learning Disorder
Diagnoses in the U.S.
Speaking at the 1998 National Institutes of Health Conference on ADHD,
William B. Carey of the Philadelphia Childrens Hospital, concluded, "What
is now most often described as ADHD in the United States appears to be a set of
normal behavioral variations... This discrepancy leaves the validity of
the construct [of ADHD as a 'disease'] in doubt..."9
WARNING: No one should stop taking any psychiatric drug without advice
and assistance by a competent non-psychiatric medical doctor.
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