Ten percent of Tennessee kids with ADHD?
Via WBIR by way of “The Tennessean” comes a shocking headline, “Ten percent of Tennessee children now diagnosed with ADHD.”
Give me a break. The story says, “Causes are unknown.”
Oh please. One in ten? Since when did this happen? Does that seem in any way probable to you? Is it even possible? A lot of young kids are being raked over the coals.
July 5th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
That is ridiculous. Doctors are just trying to make us all into patients to get job security.
July 6th, 2007 at 12:08 am
Not just or even mainly the doctors. Parents with untrained kids will go shrink shopping til they find one that will ‘treat’ their kid since they can’t be bothered, schools are rewarded for ‘discovering’ psychological conditions in their kids, shrinks who decide a kid needs help and need a DSM diagnostic of some kind to provide ‘free’ treatment, and idiot social
istworkers decide it’s easier to loaf things off on a psychologist than actually deal with a kid.July 6th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Almost every single person will show improvement when they study and do homework under the effects of ADHD drugs (AKA speed). Because ADHD is one of the few ways that parents can get their kids Dexedrine legally, that’s more than likely why there’s the explosion of the diagnosis.
If that idea doesn’t jive with you, however, you are more than welcome to blame TV, high fructose corn syrup, or tartrazine, but I’m sticking to the “homework drug” theory.
Do your speed legally, and you do better on your SATs. Do it illicitly, get a pair of orange coveralls.
July 6th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Well, I’d like to address this complex social . . . look a monkey.
July 6th, 2007 at 10:39 am
I’d be more interested in the rate of male to female with ADHD in this study.
July 6th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
emdfl: It’s not necessary to read the study, these ADHD druggings are almost always directed at males.
There is such a thing as real ADHD (I know very well, I suffer from it), but when 10% of the boys are diagnosed with the same thing, that’s not a disease, it’s just one end of the normal range. Quite often the Ritalin or Dexedrin prescriptions are at the request of the teachers. Sometimes parents are ordered by courts to get their kids drugs, based on an evaluation by school psychologists. The basic problem is, the schools are no longer prepared to handle boys acting like boys. In addition, they’ve often cut recess and PE, or in the interests of safety restricted activities so the boys don’t get enough exercise during the day and are extra-twitchy in class.
The other problem is, there’s no objective standard for ADHD. Neither is there much of a diagnostic standard for most other psychiatric illnesses. The shrinks take their best guess, administer the treatment for that condition, and see if there’s improvement. If the treatment works, they must have diagnosed correctly. But as Standard said, Ritalin is an amphetamine (“speed”) and any form of amphetamine will (at least temporarily) improve academic performance in anyone, so noting improvement in school shouldn’t be used to confirm ADHD – yet it is.
There are some bad side-effects from long-term use of amphetamines, so there’s a very good reason not to be giving them to kids who don’t absolutely need them.
July 6th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
There is such a thing as real ADHD (I know very well, I suffer from it), but when 10% of the boys are diagnosed with the same thing, that’s not a disease, it’s just one end of the normal range.
Same here, and I agree. I was never treated as a kid – the notion that the ADD-like symptoms I have now (the only symptom of ADD I *don’t* have is that I don’t rage at people directly when I’m frustrated…I either blog it out or go somewhere else to cry if it’s really that bad [this happens more often than i’d like to admit]) resulted from ADHD as a kid was just introduced to me not too long ago, and as far as the symptom list goes, I was a textbook case as a kid. None of that “he/she just talks too much in class” BS that’s apparently the only requirement needed to get drugs these days. And I had no idea, other than the fact that I was frequently yelled at and punished when I had no clue that I’d done anything wrong.
My stepbrother is one of the 10% reported these days. I think he just needs a boot to the head – he’s 13. Boys are going to act up when they’re 13. It just HAPPENS. He’s also, strangely, better in classes when he plays soccer on the weekends…interesting…
July 6th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
He’s also, strangely, better in classes when he plays soccer on the weekends…interesting…
Our schools are not helping young boys. You don’t have to be Dr. Helen to see there is a serious problem.
July 6th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
boys acting like boys is not socially fashionable, ergo, we label it a disorder or disease and drug them, thereby making them more easily managed and/or ignored.
July 6th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
This is but one small chapter in the decades-long saga of anti-male bigotry.
July 6th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
This is another extension of the Nanny-State micromanagement we have to put up with. There seems to be a real intent to turn boys into girls.
What next, no football? Every time a school system is hard up on money the football program is threatened. You don’t have to have a PhD in education to know that getting rid of recess was a huge problem for young boys. Why are such simple things so difficult for the experts to understand?
July 6th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Oh, bullshit. I think my 12-year-old niece is actually one of the few real ones. She has seizures from time to time, too. Dang, I wish I could slip an Adderall or two out of her pill bottle from time to time!
I think I might have a touch of it myself.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
July 6th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Oh, and P.s., ADHD in its milder forms is not a disorder, but just a kind of strangeness within the normal range of variation of the dangerous human monkey-mind.
I recall reading in “Stick and Rudder”, by Wolfgang Langewiesche, that “scatter-brained” folks were thought to make the best airplane pilots, because they would not get fixated on one stimulus, but look all around at everything at all times.
Takes all kinds, y’know!
July 7th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
I’m mildly ADHD, spent a year or so on Dexedrine as a pre-teen. Side effects put me off it (I have enough problems sleeping on my own, thankyouverymuch). I could well believe that up to 10% of boys have some ADHD symptoms, but that they exist on a spectrum of severity (and therefore should have a spectrum of treatments). Dexedrine didn’t help me study all that much, training me in study habits did a lot more. As an adult, I’ve found that Omega-3 Fish Oil is amazing – for me… But moderation isn’t well lokked upon most places
July 7th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Squeaky Wheel Says:
Gee, what do you think Adderall (extended release amphetamine) and Ritalin (Methylphenidate) mimic in the body? Adrenaline.
Spare the rod and pass the Dexedrine.