Wake up America! Your preparedness to prescribe powerful stimulants to children for reasons as slight as a lack of concentration is lamentable. It is a trend that threatens to effect a whole generation. Teachers have got to take a far more passive approach on this issue. Instead of recommending that students take these drugs they should instead concentrate on their own performance. Too many teachers take the selfish choice of trying to restrain a wayward or naughty child rather than focus on their own weaknesses as a teacher. Instead of picking on a childs’ lack of focus, they should be concerned about how engaging their lessons are.
To hear the medical fraternity boast about a reduction in antibiotics subscriptions when the real issue is Ritalin and others of its kind is very disappointing:
The new report also found an uptick in the use of some drugs in children, with stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, leading the pack.
From 2002 to 2010, the use of ADHD drugs grew by 46 percent — or some 800,000 prescriptions a year. The top drug dispensed to adolescents was the stimulant methylphenidate, also known as Ritalin, with more than four million prescriptions filled in 2010.
“What the article is suggesting is that the number of children that we are treating for attention deficit disorder has gone up,” said Dr. Scott Benson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a spokesperson for the American Psychiatric Association.
“For the most part I think the overall increase reflects a reduction in the stigma,” he told Reuters Health. “It used to be, ‘You’re a bad parent if you can’t get your child to behave, and you’re a doubly bad parent if you put them on medicine.'”
Dr. Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician who has written extensively about ADHD, was more critical of the rise in stimulant prescriptions, noting that the U.S. is far ahead of other countries in its use of the drugs.
“You have to look at how our society handles school children’s problems. It’s clear that we rely much, much more on a pharmacological answer than other societies do,” Diller said. “The medicine is overprescribed primarily, but under-prescribed for certain inner-city groups of children.”
A report in the New York Times last Sunday said stimulant use is becoming a commonly used study drug even among high schoolers, with healthy students easily fooling their doctors into prescribing the coveted drugs.
“There is no objective test, so obtaining the medications is relatively easy,” said Diller.
Tags: ADHD, adolescent psychiatrist, Attention Deficit Disorder, Dr. Lawrence Diller, Dr. Scott Benson, Education, Methylphenidate, New York Times, News, Overprescribed, Parenting, Report, Ritalin, Schools, Teachers, ttention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Topical Teaching 
August 13, 2012 at 9:42 am |
Good article. I advocate the same thing.
August 13, 2012 at 8:47 pm |
Thanks Alexander!