I am not qualified to make a clinical assessment about ADHD. All I know is that a startlingly high number of children are being diagnosed with the condition.
It is interesting to note that within the medical field, as prescriptions for Ritalin are skyrocketing, specialists are now more than ever, starting to speak out against the condition:
Paediatric neurologist Dr Richard Saul, based in Chicago, believes that ADHD simply ‘doesn’t exist’ and is being used as a mask for less serious problems.
Dr Saul argues that children are being misdiagnosed.
‘ADHD makes a great excuse,’ Dr Saul said in his book, ‘ADHD does not exist: The truth about Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder.’
‘The diagnosis can be an easy-to-reach-for crutch. Moreover, there’s an attractive element to an ADHD diagnosis, especially in adults – it can be exciting to think of oneself as involved in many things at once, rather than stuck in a boring rut.’
Echoing Dr Saul’s views, a group of researchers from Australia and the Netherlands said in November that the diagnosis of ADHD may have become too broad.
A wider classification of symptoms for ADHD in the psychiatric ‘bible’ used by the profession has led to a steep rise in diagnosis and prescriptions for medication, the study warned.
The group of researchers said there was now a risk of over diagnosis which could fuel scepticism about the disorder.
In addition, stretched resources may mean some seriously affected children do not get medical help, or they are undertreated.
Click on the link to read my post on Why Prescribe 1 Medication for ADHD When You Can Prescribe 2?
Click on the link to read my post on An ADHD Epidemic or an Over-Diagnosis Epidemic?
Click on the link to read my post on More than 1 in 10 U.S. Children Diagnosed with ADHD!
Click on the link to read my post on Doctors are Hypocrites When it Comes to ADHD
Click on the link to read my post on Shock Horror: Sleep Deprived Children Diagnosed with ADHD Instead!
Click on the link to read my post on ‘If my Son was a Dog, I’d Have him Put Down’: Mother of ADHD Child
Tags: ADHD, ADHD does not exist: The truth about Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD may have become too broad, ADHD simply ‘doesn’t exist’, Dr Richard Saul, Medicine, News, Paediatric neurologist Dr Richard Saul
Topical Teaching 
June 23, 2014 at 10:13 pm |
Whether ADHD exists or not there are many children who seem to have great difficulty sitting still in class and concentrating on lessons. Indeed there are some who seem to be “helped” by taking the standard prescription drugs for the condition. On the other hand I have seen children given drugs for ADHD who have become listless and lifeless as a result of medication.
If this “non-existent” malady is on the increase, perhaps we should be looking to our current classroom practices and the way in which they have become narrower, as in less varied, especially in primary schools.
I have in my mind the face of a little girl who drives her teachers to distraction for out of seat behaviour and wandering concentration. This is a friendly, lively child that teachers wish would just sit down and shut up. But she is miles in front of her peers. The child is bored stiff at school doing the same things in the same way day after day after day. She is not the only child in this case. There are 3 boys in the same grade, all quite intelligent but badly in need of some educational stimulation so that they can participate and contribute to their own education. The 3 boys also demonstrate out of seat behaviour.
Could this “epidemic” be the inevitable outcome of a regime of standardised testing and a rigid curriculum that makes very little allowance for varying rates of cognitive development among young children? How would it be different if these children could be challenged to carry out their own research according to their interests?
June 24, 2014 at 9:50 am |
I never connected ADHD with standardised testing before but I certainly think that the curriculum is extremely rigid and dull and in trying to be inclusive manages somehow to turn just about everyone off. There is no doubt that a lack of engagement is seen as the child’s problem rather than the teachers.