The Drugging of Our Kids

[Kaotiksoul6sic6]

I think this is a very good article i like how she thinks about all the ritalin that is put into the kids nowadays i see kids who have to take ritalin because their parents think they are "bad kids" but i blame it on the parent why cant they just put some discipline into the kid instead of making it into a walking vegetable

Drugging our Kids by Patricia C. Behnke
All of a sudden the use of Ritalin among our children is getting some press. But it’s not the type of press I had envisioned when I taught high school.

It seems that Connecticut has just passed a law that prohibits teachers and administrators from mentioning the use of prescription drugs to control students. This new legislation puzzled me. I did further investigation and discovered that the common belief among the medical profession and mental health officials is that teachers are guilty of putting the idea of medication into the heads of parents. Maybe this is the case at the elementary level in order to control classes of 35 or more students. But whose fault is that? Reducing class sizes would be a healthier solution. My experiences have shown that parents and doctors are much too eager to prescribe the medication for students to give them the extra edge needed to compete with the top students in the school. One year, I taught an advanced class of twenty students, six of whom were taking Ritalin. Phenomenal numbers, I thought. But this percentage is close to the national average. At my school’s parent night, a mother of one of my students approached me. “How’s my son doing? You know his ADHD diagnosis is impulse control problems.” “Well, we’re doing fine. When he gets ready to make one of his impulsive comments, I give him one of my looks, and then he stops. We’ve developed a strategy that seems to be working.” “That’s great. You just let me know and if that stops working, I’ll. . .” Let me stop here. At this precise moment the thought went through my head: “Great a parent who will support me and help me work through the behavioral part of her son’s problem.” No, such luck, I found, as she continued. “. . .make sure he starts taking another Ritalin right before your class.” Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), whose symptoms include distractibility, short attention span, hyperactivity, and implusivity, is often treated by the stimulant Ritalin. It is not quite understood why giving an anphetimine to a hyperactive child has the opposite effect, but it does in some cases. Part of the problem comes when ADHD is misdiagnosed. Many doctors caution that Ritalin should not be prescribed if other sytmptoms of behavioral disorders are present in the child. If prescribed incorrectly, the symptoms from the drugs can be far worse than the original symptoms. And according to Dr. Peter R. Breggin, Director of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, many of our children are taking three to five different psychiatric drugs as a result of their diagnosis of being ADHD. This over medication of our youth can cause psychotic episodes which in turn get blamed on many other factors besides the medication. Has anyone done a study yet on how many of the school shooters were on psychiatric medications? It might be worth the exploration. But most of all, the ones getting blamed are the children themselves. Responsibility for their actions are placed on their heads, but blame for the state they have found themselves in seems to have been neglected. In 1998, 11.4 million prescriptions for Ritalin were written in the United States. According to IMS America, a health care information company, our country now uses five times as much Ritalin as the rest of the world. One time I had a student who was having problems at both home and school, not an unusual situation for a sixteen year old. I had tried working with both parents and child as had other teachers. One factor that I felt contributed to this student’s problems was her placement in a class too advanced for her abilities and motivations. Her parents were insulted that I even suggested that possibility. After all they were professionals themselves, and a child of theirs would never be in any class but an advanced one. Yet the student kept telling me that she didn’t understand concepts, couldn’t concentrate on the vast amounts of reading material, and didn’t enjoy the writing required of an advanced English class. This particular course must be rigorous because successful completion of a test at the end of the year can earn students college English credit. Ten days before the test the parent came to me worried about her child’s ability to take the advanced placement exam. “Do you think I should put her on Ritalin?” “Has she been on Ritalin before?” “No, but her brother is, and it’s done wonders for him. I know our doctor would give it to her just to get her through the test.” “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I responded. “Oh, why? It might make her tired?” “No, you don’t even know if she needs it or not. She could have an adverse reaction.” “Well, I’m going to talk to the doctor anyway.” Yes, it’s about time that we started making legislation against those terrible teachers who want to drug our children. After all we need someone to blame when things go wrong. Nancy Reagan, how do we tell them to just SAY NO?

[einsatzkommando]

There's alot more to the problem than just bad parenting. It is not surprising that sheeple look for an easy answer when the real answers require more than a quick pill.

[einsatzkommando]

http://www.themercury.news.com.au/co...55E421,00.html


ADD 'not a real condition'
By Joel Dullroy
31aug02
THE legitimacy of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder as a medical condition is questioned in a new report.

The report, commissioned by the Youth Affairs Network of Queensland, has called for a moratorium on and inquiry into the use of the amphetamine-based drugs Ritalin and Dexamphetamine to treat ADHD – diagnosed in thousands of Australian children.

Labelling the disorder a "questionable diagnosis", the report, Queensland Children at Risk: The Overdiagnosis of 'ADHD' and the Overuse of Stimulant Medication, urges parents to abandon the drugs, originally used to treat psychiatric conditions such as narcolepsy and severe depression.

A recent study found prescription rates of ADHD drugs in Australia to be almost double that of the UK and higher than in the US.

[Kaotiksoul6sic6]

i think medical drugs aren truly needed at all everything can be overcome with mind over matter type stuff i mean look at mideval times they didnt have no ritalin what did they do with theyr hyper people o yea send them into battle so drugs arent really needed its just something to make money on

[Jack]

No one gives a shit about the kids anymore. They throw money at problems and think its gonna go away. War on drugs, war on suicide, soon enough the wars gonna turn the other way and the gutters will flow with the blood of these moral bougesois...

[Vindefense]

January 29, 2009 — Clinicians, patients, and parents should be aware that psychotic symptoms or mania arising in children treated with standard, approved drugs for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may constitute an adverse drug reaction and not necessarily an additional psychiatric disorder, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) research suggests.

An analysis of 49 randomized controlled clinical trials as well as postmarketing surveillance data on ADHD drugs shows some children, including those with no identifiable risk factors, developed drug-related symptoms of psychosis or mania, including hallucinations, at usual doses.

"These drugs seem capable of producing this type of adverse psychiatric reaction. If a child receiving one of these medications were to develop such symptoms, strong consideration should be given to the idea that it could be a reaction to the medication rather than a separate psychiatric disorder in and of itself," principal investigator Andrew D. Mosholder, MD, from the US FDA, in Silver Spring, Maryland, told Medscape Psychiatry.

The analysis revealed that a total of 11 psychosis/mania adverse events occurred during 743 person-years of double-blind treatment of ADHD medications. Although the number of cases was small, the investigators point out there were no such events reported in 420 person-years of placebo exposure in the same trials. Dr. Mosholder added that such adverse events can occur across the board with all currently approved ADHD medications.

The study is published in the February issue of Pediatrics.

Tip of the Iceberg?

Further, investigators say that the reported incidence in the analysis may represent only the tip of the iceberg. Clinical-trial subjects undergo careful selection to ensure high likelihood of treatment success and a low probability of intolerance to these medications — a situation that does not generally reflect everyday clinical practice. Therefore, they point out, the findings likely underestimate the incidence of such adverse effects in the general population.

"One of the things we would like to call attention to is that such reactions are probably not rare. The other point is that these drugs are increasingly being used in younger children who, if they do experience hallucinations, may have difficulty understanding what's happening to them or describing it to an adult. So, if a child says 'I don't want to go to bed because it is covered with ants,' there should be consideration given that this may be an adverse drug reaction," study coauthor Kate Gelperin, MD, also from the FDA, told Medscape Psychiatry.

Read rest of article: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/587526

[ChaosLord]

I tend to stray from pharmaceuticals since they're usually nothing more than chemical concoctions they give to us to be guinea pigs with.

[Linnea]

It is a difficult decision to put your child on medication. Therapy is extremly difficult for those with attention disorders. Sometimes medication is the best way to go.

[rainman]

I went to kindergarten in a poor area. The teacher always said I did great. One day I pushed my way in line and the principle was having a bad day so he yanked me up and called my mom. They lied and said I had been acting out the whole time. When asked why the teacher kept saying I was doing great they said they lied (???). I was "diagnosed" as hyper active without ever seeing a doctor, submitting to a medical examine, never answered any questions of any sort. Here's how it works "is your child acting out" "Yes" "okay he/she has ADD". It obiously isn't a legitimate medical problem.

Mainly its dispensed like candy to the poor. I'd say roughly 80% of children were given riddilin in the elementary schools I went to. From what I understand today it's closer to 100% in poor areas. I wonder if riddilin decreases fertility. It could be a reason for its use. I find it a bit odd that a magickal disease only afflicts poor people. Maybe it's a good thing though from our point of view. Yet the poor still have 10 babies a piece and are subsidized by welfare for it so I guess it can't be that.

It's the same thing for the middle aged and elderly. There are sham "diseases" that are used to give them drugs. Look up firbo mialgia. I'm not sure if its spelled right. Basically it's a disease where nothing is wrong with you, there is no way to diagnose it other than you say you are in chronic pain and they give you pills for it. The commys of the 60s weren't making enough progress with illegal drugs so now they are finding ways to convince people that they "need" to be stoned all the time. The more whacked out and zombie like the population is the more they accept liberalism, slavery and other social changes of our era.

[ChaosLord]

Drugs are just the beginning, unfortunately. Additives to foods are also a problem in the role of development and growth. Artificial sweeteners put in certain foods and soft drinks may also pose health problems. One example is aspartame, a synthesized artificial sweetener. It's manufactured from genetically modified e. coli and other substitutes and when it's metabolized in the body it breaks down into formaldehyde and methanol alcohol. You may hear that the levels of aspartame in foods will not hurt you, which in a sense is true, but formaldehyde in the body isn't metabolized or purged very quickly and can be bioaccumulated.