I am not sure if ADHD exists or not. Since I am not a doctor or medical professional, I will decide to err on the side of caution and give ADHD the benefit of the doubt. But whether or not it exists doesn’t seem to be the pressing issue. The issue seems more to do with the poor children misdiagnosed with ADHD in what seems to be a completely haphazard fashion:
A STUDY of almost a million Canadian children has found those born in December, the last month of the school year intake, are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and medicated for it than those born in January.
Relative immaturity may result in the inappropriate diagnosis of ADHD, the University of British Columbia researchers suggest.
They raise “concerns about the potential harms of overdiagnosis and overprescribing” for the condition. Children given medication for ADHD may suffer adverse effects on sleep, appetite and growth and face increased risk of cardiovascular events, the paper says.
Inappropriate diagnosis may lead teachers and parents to treat the child differently and change self-perceptions.
The study in this month’s Canadian Medical Association Journal, found boys born in December were 30 per cent more likely to receive a diagnosis of ADHD than boys born in January and 41 per cent more likely to be given medication for ADHD.
The medical fraternity has let themselves down with ADHD. It seems from this untrained eye that too many kids are being diagnosed with this condition and therefore, too many kids are needlessly medicated. What this does is bunch real sufferers of ADHD with kids who have come down with a bout of, for example, immaturity.
Tags: ADHD, Children and Medication, Education, Health, life, Medicine, News, overdiagnosis, overprescribing, Parenting, Study, University of British Columbia
Topical Teaching 
March 20, 2012 at 11:32 pm |
How about the disbedient child, who just doesn’t listen?
March 20, 2012 at 11:44 pm |
They can be put in the same category as immature children.
March 20, 2012 at 11:47 pm
I’d agree, good article.
March 20, 2012 at 11:40 pm |
I had a student who was tonguing the pills, not swallowing them, then spitting them out later. Thinking the meds weren’t working, his doctors upped dosages twice. Finally the child was caught spitting out a pill, so they monitored his intake.
The only problem: now he was taking a pill that was twice his recommended dosage. No one bothered to bring the dose back down to normal after discovering the true culprit behind a lack of results — so the child spent several months like a zombie, on dosages that were too high.
The real tragedy here, though, was he was later re-assessed and discovered to have been misdiagnosed… He didn’t have ADHD. He was just a hyperactive child coming from a violent broken home. He needed to talk it out, and to have consistency in his life, not drugs.
March 20, 2012 at 11:42 pm |
I see this as a tragedy. And because of our reverence for the medical fraternity we are not strong enough to question their decisions.