I Thought a Think

These Are the Stories That Drive Me Mad

From the December 6th Education Week:

Low doses of the drug Ritalin are effective in treating the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in preschool-age children, but young children are especially sensitive to the drug’s side effects and should be closely monitored, says a report published in the November issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Ritalin is the most commonly prescribed drug to treat children with ADHD, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, which paid for the study. However, the federal Food and Drug Administration has not approved its use for children under the age of 6.

Preschool kids identified with ADHD. Roll that around your head for a bit and see how it sounds to you. I find it horrifying that any pre-school child would be given a drug with powerful side effects based on an ADHD diagnosis, but maybe there is that one kid in a million.....

Also on the ADHD front, schools in Israel are using biofeedback to train kids how to overcome the condition, according to an article from Edutopia magazine. It’s also got the scary stat that in 2004 94% of ADHD drug sales worldwide were here in the United States; the other 6% was in Europe.

The question is, why?

ADHD or PTSD?

That little guy that you look at and think, “My God, is he ever ADD!”? There’s research to show that his acting out might be the sign of something more serious. From February’s edition of Edutopia Magazine:

If a child acts inattentive and hyperactive in school, chances are very good he (it’s usually a boy) will be diagnosed with ADHD. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder affects an estimated 8-12 percent of children worldwide. The designation is so common it’s become a casual synonym for being scatterbrained (“I’m totally ADD today”), and its prevalence is self-propogating—the more people are aware of the disorder, the more likely they are to claim it as the cause of a problem.

Beyond the overdiagnosis of kids who are hyper but healthy, there’s a graver consequence to this attention-deficit bandwagon. A small but growing body of research confirms what is, so far, a little-known fact—that the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can look exactly like those of ADHD. In other words, a distractible, impulsive irritable child who looks to a teacher or caregiver like a classic ADHD case may actually be struggling to cope with abuse, divorce, natural disaster, or another serious trauma. It can be hard to tell the difference; in a 1994 study by researchers at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, trained interviewers assessed a group of troubled children and, not knowing the children were sexually abused, diagnosed 46 percent of them with ADHD.

Something to consider before we pass the pills. You can find the whole article here.

You can get a free subscription to Edutopia at the link. It’s a nice read.

The New York Times on Living With ADHD

There's a very neat feature over at the Times' website on people with ADHD; the audio is wonderfully interesting to listen to.

I'm not a big ADHD guy; I think the amount of medication that we give kids today is absolutely insane. There are kids who need it, sure, but I think there are many more where the pills are a mistake. It's interesting to hear from those who actually have the diagnosis.