As someone in my 5th decade, with lifelong ADHD (though given my age it did not exist in my youth, and was only diagnosed relatively recently), I'm wary of backing away from treatments until we actually do have real viable alternatives.
It took far too long to get ADHD widely recognised, and even now it's often more likely to be received with humour than real recognition. Much more research, especially on other possible treatments and therapies, is needed before we turn too zealously against the only treatment actually shown to work. We have a long history of over diagnosing and overdoing pretty much everything.
I've only ever managed it with limited success. There's little doubt that the drugs can work. Despite some evidence of over-diagnosis and over-prescription there are many people who have had their prospects transformed as a result. I suggest the ADHD label is being significantly over applied because real awareness, even in the medical profession, is still abysmal. Doctors don't have time to look at home circumstances, or parents and other factors that might affect behaviour. Awareness coming from some TV comedy skit however is high.
I don't actually care that we don't yet have full understanding of how the drugs work, or that OMG they're amphetamines. I often wonder how things may have turned out differently for me had I encountered more GP awareness and less ridicule, or even earlier self-awareness or teen diagnosis and treatment.
If we are too successful "exposing big pharma" and overdiagnosis in the minds of GPs and the public, lives will be ruined once again. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here rather than seek wider understanding.
Why do people on meth enjoy cleaning? There is little difference between meth and Adderall. Taking any type of stimulant even coffee helps people do menial tasks and be more optimistic while doing them.
Maybe millions of people are effected by some problem of distraction and lack of focus. But to suggest there's some biochemical reason for this that's cured by amphetamines seems like pseudoscience to me.
Drugs do work. If you want to take amphetamines to improve your work performance, go for it. But to suggest that it's a disease seems disingenuous.
There's something like 16 million Americans who take Adderall, which has drastically increased in used (300%+ from 2008-2012). Another poll said 35% of college students had said they'd tried Adderall.
The science of ADHD is ambiguous. The science of moderate uses of amphetamine or methamphetamines for improving work performance is easier to understand.
Imagine this: you're an adult professional, sitting at your desk looking at a freelance work assignment that needs to be done by tomorrow, weeping with frustration because you've been staring at it for eight solid hours, trying and trying to begin, and you can't because focusing on anything important is like trying to grip a handful of water.
Because you ran out of your meds.
This is what my life is like. If that doesn't sound like a medical condition to you, then I don't know what you're thinking. If you think I haven't tried everything else imaginable to deal with it, you're mistaken. The only thing that works is amphetamines. There's definitely downsides, and if someone showed me a better solution I'd love to try it. But, so far, there isn't one.
Maybe some people take the meds who don't really need them. That's a shame. You don't get to sacrifice my career just to keep some people from getting high.
Imagine this: you're an adult professional, writhing in pain and occasionally vomiting, weeping in frustration while laying in bed not able to get out.
Because you ran out of heroin.
That is what my life was like. If that doesn't sound like a medical condition to you, then I don't know what you're thinking.
It can indeed cause withdrawal symptoms but not so bad since psychiatrists suggest "treatment holidays", where you are free to choose not to take them for a few weeks.
Other psychiatric medications are often withdrawn slowly. For example, a patient on weekend leave in hospital would be called straight back to the ward if they lose their prescribed benzodiazepines e.g smashing a bottle of solution, due to withdrawal. Especially the case if used during alcoholism detox, where the seizures could kill otherwise.
Many of the symptoms also do not go away with medication. It's not a magic bullet. It just raises the floor a little bit so things are easier to manage. Some days the medication doesn't help all that much if other things off set it.
Were you writhing, vomiting and weeping before you ever took a hit of heroin? Did you continue writhing, vomiting, and weeping for months after quitting with no reduction?
I agree that there are people who will benefit from the use of prescription medications to treat different life issues. I too suffer from hours of staring at work, unable to start or finish. I don't think I have a learning disability or a disease that needs treatment. But I think there are many alternatives to help people who cannot start and finish work tasks.
I can usually find a quiet and productive work environment free from distractions. I can usually adjust my caffeine intake levels. I can usually adjust the amount of personally stress in my life. I can usually adjust the amount of sleep. I can usually break up my work into small enough chunks to get started. I can block certain computer activities which are distracting.
Yes everybody is different. No, we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Yes, we should be exploring alternative treatments besides powerful amphetamines which can cause addiction and health issues. I don't believe having a problem justifies all the cost that go along with treatment. Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
I don't want to have to do drugs at work to keep my career from those who want to take a pill and work for 12 hours a day.
"Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem."
For someone without the condition, perhaps.
My entire life I've tried to work with managing techniques, such as those you suggest, and a hundred others, none of which made a blind bit of difference. Caffiene does not seem to affect me in the same way as it does most people btw. So I've spent a good part of my career trying to find roles and bosses more suited to my scatty ways - often far from easy - once I realised I was a little unusually wired.
The biggest problem ADD has is that everyone gets distracted, struggles to focus sometimes, so the majority of people exatrapolate that out and presume there's nothing wrong. Then go on to suggest 5 things that help them with their occasional distractions. That's like telling a wheelchair user to just walk. "Well have you tried walking differently?" "Tried a stick?" I spent 50 years trying to just walk and I still can't. My first week on meds however, when I was told I'd probably wouldn't yet notice a difference, was indescribable. Truly I don't have the words. I almost dropped into depression realising I could have been like this my whole life. "Is this what other people have all the time?". I could have achieved so much!
That I achieved some measure of success with the condition, compared to how my mind could have worked surprises and disappoints in equal measure - what might I have achieved?
For many actually with the condition it's highly debilitating. They can't not be distracted. Ever. Often they're being distracted from being distracted from... IT IS NOT "oh look, shiny" on facebook. For some powerful amphetamines will be the best solution of those yet available (in very low doses compared to dietary or recreational uses). You don't get any of the same effects as you would taking amphetamines at a party. It's a neurological imbalance, so a neurological treatment will often be fitting.
Course I probably shouldn't think of it as a learning disability and just adjust the amoutn of tea I drink and look at some ideas for people who cannot start and finish work tasks.
I don't want over diagnosis, or easy diagnosis of very young children, and ideally want some more tools in the box I can choose from.
Why do you assume that I'm not already using all of the techniques you described, in conjunction with the meds? Why do you assume that you know what's going on inside my head better than I do?
I'm not being rhetorical, I honestly would like to know. It's a huge problem that so many people refuse to believe that mental illness exists, not just for me and not just for ADD. You wouldn't say to someone with chronic fatigue syndrome "Yes, nobody likes to get up for work, but you just have to suck it up and deal with it." You wouldn't tell a diabetic that they shouldn't have to take shots just to get through the day. What makes you feel qualified to do that to me?
> Yes, we should be exploring alternative treatments besides powerful amphetamines which can cause addiction and health issues.
Absolutely we should! I would love to find a non-stimulant treatment that works for me. I regularly do research and ask my doctor to see if there are any new treatments available. Until they come up with one that works, I'm going to keep doing what I need to do to get by.
Also, I'd love to see a source on "addiction and health issues," because Ritalin and the other common ADD meds are not addictive, and have no long-term side effects for the large majority of patients, at clinical doses.
> I don't want to have to do drugs at work to keep my career from those who want to take a pill and work for 12 hours a day.
This is a strawman. That has never happened to you; your career is not under threat from drug abusers. My career will absolutely crash out immediately if I stop taking my meds, I've tried it before. What you're doing is no different than medical marijuana prohibition: you'd sooner let patients suffer than run the risk that someone might get high.
1. You do not enjoy your work, and thus have no motivation.
2. Maybe you should not do the work and suffer the consequences.
3. You have built a mental dependency that you must take amphetamines to "focus", and this hinders your real ability to focus.
All of those things ^^^ I have experienced at one point or another in my life. You can focus, you have to make yourself. There is no other way. You do not need medication... But maybe you do, I highly doubt it though.
> Maybe you should not do the work and suffer the consequences.
I've done that. A lot. It sucks. That's why I take medication.
> You can focus, you have to make yourself. There is no other way. You do not need medication...
I don't understand why people can't quite believe that mental illness is real. You would never tell a diabetic or an asthmatic that they shouldn't have to take medicine every day. But if someone's clinically depressed, or has ADD, or any of a hundred other mental conditions, people just assume you're imagining things or being lazy.
It is hereditary too. I've seen how in past generations, children with these kind of conditions were just labeled as trouble makers and got no help and eventually failed out the system.
Just simple understanding and acceptance that this is a condition, medication or not, makes a huge difference. And yet here we are still arguing it.
I have struggled with ADHD for my entire life. I don't think you realize how it can affect you.
I started to take medication after nearly failing out of college. It was physically impossible for me to study for more than 40 minutes; I would fall asleep no matter where I was. It was not a matter of motivation or dedication. I was hitting a physical barrier that I could get around any other way.
I agree that there is over-diagnosis is a problem, but especially as a person who came around to medication as a last resort, it is very offensive to say that I don't need it. I avoided it for years, but within a few months I was able to use all of the strategies I had learned, coupled with the meds, to seriously turn my life around. I went from academic probation (GPA in the 2.2 range) to top of my classes with about 15 mg of adderall a day. I've tried placebos, I've tried therapy, but I would not be able to do the work I do today without drugs.
Look, I understand you may not understand what it is like having ADHD, but your post came off incredibly dismissive. Telling a person with ADHD to "just focus" can be like telling a person in a wheelchair to "go for a run": it is incredibly frustrating to hear and can be nearly impossible. This may be a hard concept for you to get your head around, but this is a real problem for some people and medication is a real(and often necessary) solution to a real problem.
When you have a medical condition that you treat with medication, a shocking consequence of discontinuing treatment is a return of that medical conditions symptoms.
On the bright side, people don't call you a slacker anymore. Now your just a drug addict.
I have had experienced something similar with Xanax. The symptoms returned but worse than ever and I was certain that taking loads of it is absolutely necessary. Once you are able to go off, the symptoms go back to normal. Anxiety doesn't appear, but Xanax only makes it worse. It is same story with stimulants.
16 million Americans seems to correlate fairly well with the medical consensus that around 5% of adults have some degree of ADHD. Perhaps it's not as widely over-diagnosed as sometimes claimed?
" But to suggest there's some biochemical reason for this that's cured by amphetamines seems like pseudoscience to me."
A pseudo science that very strongly runs in families.
A pseudo science that's strongly linked with dopamine transmission.
A pseudo science that has some medical evidence pointing to it being an under development of the frontal lobes.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27489770 "Quantifying patterns of brain activity: Distinguishing unaffected siblings from participants with ADHD and healthy individuals."
as you can see there is no ambiguity that ADHD is a biochemical and neural network-grounded disorder backed by a galaxy of studies. the sad fact is that stimulants don't work for up to 20% of people with ADHD, dooming them to dysfunction.
and yes, the pharmas are greedy, and promote overdiagnosis. and yes, modern life promotes ADHD-like symptoms-- but the whole point of ADHD is that it's a priori relative to life experience.
I think you are being a bit dismissive of what is a widely accepted mental disability[1][2][3][4][5]. If you want to spout some nonsense about how you feel about the field, that's fine, but note that you are falling into the same category of people that don't believe in climate change because winter was "pretty cold". It just so turns out that the world is not all about you, and while it may be difficult to understand that this may be a real issue for some people, you shouldn't say that this is a substance abuse problem. To say that is at the very least ignorant.
ADHD is well researched, and well understood by those who study it. The problem is that people think ADHD is just an issue of self discipline or attentiveness. It is not. It is a serious disorder with serious effects that are unambiguous. No doubt there are stimulant seeking people who claim to have ADHD to get stimulants, and people without ADHD representing that they have ADHD may lead to the impression that the disorder is ambiguous when it isn't. Also if someone has ADHD for long periods of time they may have co-mobidity with other disorders such as depression, etc. and this also may muddy perceptions.
ADHD is not strictly an attention issue. It's named for attention because that is an early and obvious symptom but it is much worse then that. Calling the disorder an attention deficit disorder has turned out to be very bad as it leads people to the wrong mental model of the disorder. Thinking that it's just laziness on the part of the patent or the patents parents, in the case of children. This is a tragically misguided perception, based in ignorance and the poor choice of names.
In actuality ADHD is a developmental disorder that is a more general impairment of executive function that includes regulation of emotion, working memory and the internal perception of time and other effects in addition to inattentiveness. This impairment is due to abnormal dopamine transport that can be clearly observed in MRI studies.
These studies have been repeated many times in many contexts, with various controls, and been thoroughly confirmed.
Also, you are wrong about Adderall. There is a significant difference between meth and Adderall. Stimulants are by for the best understood, most tested, longest used, and lowest risk medications in psychotherapy. Only a few stimulants show clinical improvement in the function of people with ADHD, and the improvement can be profound. Caffeine for example does not show these clinical improvements.
So basically you know jack shit about this topic, and therefore should keep quite, just like any other medical condition you know nothing about. It actually causes harm by interfering with the dissemination of reliable information in the study and treatment of a very serious disorder.
I identify with a lot of what you say. I was not formally diagnosed with ADD (now properly called ADHD-PI, the non-hyperactive variant) until a few years ago, in my 50s. I did well in school but ADD has been the bane of my career. I get bored easily with uninteresting tasks and the mental effort to complete them is exhausting. If I slip, and find something more interesting to do, it can annoy my boss, to say the least. I'd like at job that fits my brain better, but at my age, opportunities are rare. I'm now taking a mild dose of an amphetamine (Vyvanse) and it does help, but I still have to maintain a lot of self awareness so I don't wander off into the weeds.
The thing is, diagnosis rates in the U.S. are something like 3-4 times as high as in most countries in Europe, which are themselves 3-4 times as high as a country like France, which is averse to ADHD diagnoses. The main treatment for ADHD is lifelong maintenance of powerful amphetamines, when we have no idea what the long-term consequences of that would be, nor what proportion of children would normally develop out of the ADHD spectrum with time.
Overdiagnosis at that rate means that millions of children are being given amphetamines, when they shouldn't be!
We don't yet know how many of those are being overdiagnosed - we don't yet know the limits of the spectrum. There's a lot of opinion on both sides, which is never helpful.
I can say that I wish I had had 30 more years on amphetamines, the difference has been marked. For the first time in my life the engine wasn't misfiring. If it were certain to take a decade or more of my remaining life, I'd continue fully aware. I still drift, but I think that's more because I have the habits. For me it'll still be a lifelong process to try and correct the bad habits and thought patterns reinforced throughout the first half of my life. Others will be less clear beneficiaries of treatment or better served in other ways.
I think diagnosing and treating toddlers and 7 year olds is appalling - better to try and manage it, or look into causative factors like poor home environment and such. A more Scandinavian approach to school may help more (The UK would benefit from this too). A good proportion will grow out of it. That comes back to wider real awareness though especially with first contact - teachers and GPs etc.
>we have no idea what the long-term consequences of that would be
Perhaps you have no idea, but we actually have a pretty good idea from 80 years of stimulant medication usage.
Do you have data suggesting negative consequences of decades of stimulant usage?
No? Then it's surely the best decision to ignore this FUD and continue treating people of all ages with stimulants which have been shown to be safe in such low doses.
Particularly when we have evidence suggesting not medicating is dangerous, as I mentioned in my other comments.
The main question is whether medication-based treatment encourages ADHD to persist past adolescence. Non-medication-based treatment, of course, does not necessarily imply non-treatment or non-intervention.
I looked, and it seems to be about double (though figures disagree). And I wonder if this isn't simply a difference in educational systems and expectations of children.
I'm in Norway, and children play quite a bit, even in school. They take frequent breaks, have outdoor recess (in nearly all weather), and have no homework. The general attitude is that kids should be kids and not have to worry about stuff. Sure, there is more pressure as the child grows up, but it isn't comparable. School days are shorter as well. Far cry from what I remember as a kid in the US or what I see now. Little in the way of recess, homework starts early. I had a few hours every night at age 11. Sit still, be quiet for hours, do all the worksheets.
I'm guessing there are kids with ADHD that might not need medication, merely time to learn and develop coping mechanisms. Perhaps some children wouldn't have such a problem in the one system whereas in the other would be quite a disruption.
> Overdiagnosis at that rate means that millions of children are being given amphetamines, when they shouldn't be!
Only if you define overdiagnosis as "diagnosis relative to other countries" and not "diagnosis relative to the percentage of people with the ailment". If you use the first, we probably overdiagnose cancer, since countries like Mali have a much lower diagnosis rate...
> children would normally develop out of the ADHD spectrum with time.
And until they normally develop out, they would be behind in every measurable attribute as what we expect in their growth through school. Avoiding administrating a treatment which works because of our fear of the treatment is measurably bad for those affected. See, again, cancer and chemotherapy.
When similar standards of diagnosis are used across countries, they find similar rates of ailment. The difference is that the criteria for diagnosis in the US catches a much larger percentage of the population. Moreover, the US is also much more likely to use pharmaceuticals as the front-line treatment to any ADHD diagnosis.
Really, my concern isn't about children who would be diagnosed either way, or who unambiguously need pharmaceutical treatment (who exist in all areas). It's about the marginal cases where pharmaceuticals may not be warranted.
It would be dreadful to administer chemotherapy drugs to patients who got a false-positive on a cancer screening (cancer is not a spectrum, but I'll run with your analogy).
And as I said in another comment, skepticism of the long-term use of this medication in young children does not at all mean advocacy of non-treatment, non-intervention, or lack of support for children at the margins of the ADHD spectrum.
Some of these questions have been studied. When the same criteria are used, prevalence is comparable in Germany, Brazil and other locations. The recognition of the condition is affected by cultural factors but that's true for many conditions.
ADHD by definition is a condition that originates in childhood and persists into adulthood in about 1/2 or more of cases. In adults ADHD is indeed a chronic condition that often responds to amphetamine or methylphenidate treatment. At therapeutic doses, long-term treatment with such agents is generally well-tolerated, but careful monitoring is necessary to assure medication use remains effective and tolerable.
Interestingly, amphetamine has been used for this purpose for nearly 80 years, and methylphenidate for >50 years. Despite the several decades these agents have been employed, nothing more effective has yet been developed.
As I pointed out in my other comment, among adults anyway, the issue is that ADHD is vastly undertreated to the severe detriment of individuals, their families, communities and nation as a whole.
> ADHD by definition is a condition that originates in childhood and persists into adulthood in about 1/2 or more of cases.
Right, and all of this is a question about under what conditions it persists or fails to persist. Does ADHD medication, relative to say behavioral therapy or nontreatment/nonintervention, make it more or less likely that ADHD will persist in adulthood? This is a very important question of those who fear ADHD medication is overused, and may be encouraging ADHD to persist past adolescence.
Very important questions indeed, while there's no complete answer some data is encouraging. Imaging studies, for example, have shown children treated continuously to early adulthood show more robust brain development (white fiber tracts) vs. untreated subjects. Medication treatment is certainly not harmful in that respect and probably helpful.
The role of behavioral therapies is unclear, though practitioners point to instances where that makes a big difference in the outcome. Admittedly it is a hard subject to study systematically given the individualized nature of behavioral treatments.
However research is hardly saying that medication is the only factor. Lately, there is a great deal of attention in the field directed to findings that childhood adversity, e.g., abuse, malnutrition, environmental impoverishment contributes greatly to conditions that resemble ADHD. The implication is clear that reducing the negative impacts of inner-city poverty, etc., would have salutary effects on reducing incidence of psychiatric disorders including ADHD.
In adults, ADHD sufferers with long-term medication treatment show better functioning than untreated peers (matched for age, sex, education, etc.) if less well than unaffected individuals.
Most such studies have used medication therapy as the marker of treatment. So far the contribution of behavioral therapies has been hard to pin down. However, clinical experience is that medication alone is inadequate for adults to improve.
The saying is "pills don't build skills". Indeed, guided behavioral practicing is an essential element of ADHD treatment, though optimized medication treatment can be very useful to enhance neurophysiological infrastructure necessary for normalizing functioning. An individually optimized combination of treatment approaches is most likely to be successful, but hard to determine a priori, thus hard to study experimentally.
I don't believe my response truly satisfies your excellent question, but I'm very glad to know there are people like you who are thinking intelligently about these problems that affect all of us directly or indirectly.
> The thing is, diagnosis rates in the U.S. are something like 3-4 times as high as in most countries in Europe, which are themselves 3-4 times as high as a country like France, which is averse to ADHD diagnoses.
I've heard people from France say that many French doctors absolutely will not diagnose ADHD in anyone, no matter what their symptoms, preferring to tell sufferers that they're lazy. It may be possible that the US overprescribes and Europe in general is a happy medium. France is systemically failing to treat people with a genuine medical need, and it ruins lives. If it has to be one or the other, I'd prefer to err on the side of helping people in need.
I'm glad amphetamine treatment is effective for you. I hope you can recognize that your situation (an adult, in full control of your own care, with informed consent at all stages) is very very very very very different than putting 6 year olds on ritalin because they're fidgetting at their desk in class. This is really done in America.
No, it's not done that way - there are more factors than "fidgeting in class" that psychiatrists take into account when diagnosing ADHD.
And frankly, if they're put on Ritalin and stop fidgeting and start paying attention, then it's probably a valid diagnosis in the first place. People without ADHD would end up fidgeting more, not less, if given amphetamines.
As a parent it's very hard. Our governess mentioned our one daughter was having difficulty focusing. So I did a trial with just 5mg/day Ritalin. Week on, week off. The difference is huge.
It's a really hard call. I'm worried about the effects long term, but she does so much better with it. If she was in a school instead of with a private tutor, I'm guessing she'd be way worse off.
FWIW I used to think giving meds to an 8yr old was horrible. It's not so clear anymore.
school is so boring we give children focus drugs and are surprised when they are able to focus? and we dont talk about fixing school, because the short term pragmatic decision is to adapt the brilliant kid to the shitty environment, instead of the inverse.
I don't think her school is too boring. It's her and her sister and a full time teacher just for them. They have near unlimited flexibility in scheduling and approaching things. She goes on about how fun it is; they both love it. It's just she can't seem to focus on any task without the meds. She really likes taking them, hence making me more conflicted.
that is because the task is boring, if it was engaging kids would focus on their own. its not more enthralling than the thing her attention diverts to. with screens, we have trained kids to always have ever changing dopamine bursts and excitement. school hasnt adapted to the chaoticness of our desires (and maybe ti shouldnt, maybe focus is a skill we should hone, instead of obtain through cheating.)
Yes, so what? My son had a bladder infection, and I certainly endorsed the use of drugs to treat that. If there is a real and identifiable condition interfering with a child's quality of life for which there is concrete reason to think that a drug is an effective and remedy for which the risk of other side effects is mild compared to the expected benefit, why shouldn't responsible adults endorse drugging children in that circumstance?
bladder infection is an infection by a microbial disease. it's a pathogen caused by another organism that shouldn't be present in a healthy body. what exactly is ADHD? what is being treated, anyway?
this is medicating for "normality", which is another way of saying our society is defining and enforcing (with mind-altering drugs) a very narrow band of acceptable personalities and behavioral responses to environmental situations.
if chemical enforcement of "normal" is ok with you, then go ahead and drug your kids.
No, it really isn't. There's nothing normal about having ADHD. It's debilitating: it makes it very hard to hold a job. It makes it nearly impossible to plan for the future.
Imagine having a horn blowing in your ear at a random interval between a second and an hour, completely disrupting your train of thought, as if you just did a complete mental context switch. How big of a mental stack could you create, knowing that the horn will blow at any moment, completely destroying it.
Your friends get tired of talking to you, because you constantly lose track of what they're saying; you are constantly looking around for the source of that damned horn.
You try and read a book, but then the horn blows and you forget where on the page you were. You struggle on, and find that you can get back on track more quickly if you leave you finger where you were. The horn blows, and you spend a few moments lamenting that damned horn, and have to re-read the last few sentences to pick the context back up. The horn blows.
You try and walk down a hallway and through a door. The horn blows, disorientating you a bit, causing you to hit the doorframe on your way through.
You can't write code. You can't hold deep conversations. You can't read deep, technical books. You can't handle the college workload. You can't put together a plan for your future. All because of that f*cking horn.
But it's OK, everyone who doesn't hear the horn tells you - you're just living in the wrong time in history. You'd make a great hunter.
If someone offered you some earmuffs quiet that horn, would you take them? Would you then advocate them for others who have that same horn blaring in their ears?
This description is right out of Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, written in the context of opposite effect of handicapping those of extreme skill/means rather than the debilitating effect of those trying to live a "normal" life.
Yes, it is. However the effects of the sounds on cognition as described in that short story are remarkably spot on for how ADHD affects my ability to concentrate and think.
He even got the ability to "ignore the sound" down pat - it can be done if something novel really grabs hold of your attention... and that it doesn't last.
Perhaps you have a point. But in most cases when medication is prescribed it's because the condition is debilitating. I can speak from experience that when a child is incapable of sustained play, overwhelmed by the interactions, and has trouble with going to the bathroom that we aren't talking about a narrow band of acceptability. Your comment, like so many others here, demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the real problem.
I've seen the absolutely amazing affects of non-stimulant ADD medication and it's not chemical enforcement of normal, it is treatment of a disease.
Not just any children, I'm endorsing providing drugs to children who need those drugs. Just as I would endorse giving a child with a headache an appropriate amount of acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Or steroids to a child with severe MS. Or opioids to a child with chronic pain.
Just because the defect is in the brain and not the muscles or nerves or elsewhere doesn't make it less of a treatable defect. Or less worthy of treatment.
It is done this way and it happened to me. The public school I was attending told my parents in 2nd grade put him on Ritalin or we are going to expel him.
It took far too long to get ADHD widely recognised, and even now it's often more likely to be received with humour than real recognition. Much more research, especially on other possible treatments and therapies, is needed before we turn too zealously against the only treatment actually shown to work. We have a long history of over diagnosing and overdoing pretty much everything.
I've only ever managed it with limited success. There's little doubt that the drugs can work. Despite some evidence of over-diagnosis and over-prescription there are many people who have had their prospects transformed as a result. I suggest the ADHD label is being significantly over applied because real awareness, even in the medical profession, is still abysmal. Doctors don't have time to look at home circumstances, or parents and other factors that might affect behaviour. Awareness coming from some TV comedy skit however is high.
I don't actually care that we don't yet have full understanding of how the drugs work, or that OMG they're amphetamines. I often wonder how things may have turned out differently for me had I encountered more GP awareness and less ridicule, or even earlier self-awareness or teen diagnosis and treatment.
If we are too successful "exposing big pharma" and overdiagnosis in the minds of GPs and the public, lives will be ruined once again. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here rather than seek wider understanding.