add/adhd

[monkeyjunky]

These two conditions are very much in the public eye at the mo, with such statistics as "15 thousand billion american kids prescribed ritalin for add" bandied about in the media simply for the controversy of the fact that kids are being given amphetamines. I'm just wondering how necessary this treatment, and even the diagnosis of the condition is.
I realise theres a distinction between add and adhd - the latter being (i think) a lack of noradrenalin in the brain - and that there are genuine, severe cases, but i feel that for the most part, attention deficiency in young children is largely due to poor parenting and diet; and the same condition in older people is either attention seeking behaviour, or an excuse for a lack of success.
I'm just interested to hear what other people think about this - because there seems to be an awful lot on BL claiming to be add or adhd

 

[ebola?]

>>the latter being (i think) a lack of noradrenalin in the brain - >>

Why do you think a lack of noradrenaline would lead to an overabundance of motor activity?
...
I spent a good bit of last year researching a new diagnostic tool for ADD/ADHD...I'll chime in later. I wanna see what people think.

ebola

 

[bleedingheartcommie]

I'm currently writting a paper on the subject for my major in sociology. The assumption is that the chemical irragularities are the product of behavioral learning. So the medical industry is technically "medicalizing" what is a social rather than a medical problem. the danger in this is that it takes the focus away from what's causing the problem in the first place.


for example
post tramadic stress Dis. used to be evaluated on a case by case level, b/c each cause was different. Since industrialized medicine and war have met, PTSD had been medicalized. the cause of the condition, war, is no longer the subject of study and is considered to be natural. By medicalizing ptsd, people have started asking how we can treat the victims instead of asking if war is a good idea in the first place.


the same medicalization has happened to alcaholism, abuse, eating disorders, even child birth. The medical industry is redefining what is social to be medical so that it may control, exploit, or even orchestrate more and more of the general population. we should stop giving zoloft to little girls who are "anorexic" and start changing the ocial norms and events that pushed her into the purely social situation.


the med. industry has also done a great job of marketing the idea that chemicals cause behavior, and not the other way around. or even that one must control the other. They are a simaltanious relationship (brain chemistry and behaviour/awwareness/thought/whatever). the point is that one isn't causing the other. so to say that there is a chemical imbalence is to medicalize something social (behavior).


in the scope of add/adhd, the speed of our culture change in relation to history is often overlooked. Our intelligence, thought speed, culture, social demands, industrial demands, and schalastic demands have accelerated in the last 40 years faster than man kind has ever seen. we have kids sitting in classrooms with brains flying all around b/c the speed of image recognition has increased so much even just with cartoons. This kid is bombarded with 100x the social rules that his parents were at his age. Not that they are more strict, just much more complex. our kids brains are moving faster than their parents brains were, and at a much greater difference than history has ever seen. when you combine this with the industrial style of education, the hidden curriculum of training kids to sit still all the time, which has gotten more strict. this is what you get. kids who dont want to pay attention to a sit still boring linear classroom. this is by all means a social problem.

----------

let's say, perhaps taht culture has remained reletivel constant during this rise of add. and assume that it is a chemical imbalence. Most sociologists are finding links between add kids and parents who took prescription drugs for social purposes (anxiety, diet, speed, ect). the add phenomenon might be the result of the prozac movement.

the direction i really want to go with this deals with the morality of chemically enginiering a society, evolution, what is natural, and what is moral. and that is just way too off topic.


but in summation, add/adhd is a socially caused social problem that has been medicalized, (or redefined by the medical industry) which gives much more control to the med industry, which has no business orchestrating a purely social event. This is dangerous b/c it takes the focus away from the social factors that are causing the problem. Ritalin is a short cut to a big social bust imho.


besides
kids on speed
how good can that be for their developing brains?

 

[JerseyGirl]

I think that there are geniune cases of ADD/ADHD.

However 70% of the people who are diagnosed with it don't have it. They have energy, they are children, they dont want to focus because what they have to focus on is boring schoolwork.

And doctors just want to prescribe meds and take their cut.

What happened to the days of actually diagnosing people with diseases, not just throwing drugs at the problem because they want the easy solution?

 

[streetsurfer]

There is this thing called google Monkeyjunky, it is good for finding out factual information about things negating the need for us to educate [edit: no ad-homs] when u come in here and spout opinions based on nothing but casual passive observation at the most! And bleedingheartcommie, u should use google to look up "will to power" and "Nietzsche" and then maybe consider that since the world doesn't look likely to morph into some kind of socialist utopia in the near future that maybe giving these sufferers stimulant medications that let them funtion in THIS society outways the (alledged) health implications of medicinal doses of stimulant medications. And Jerseygirl, care to provide a reference for that 70% figure? Or did u just pull it out of your ass? hmmm? I am just so grossly offended by people who proclaim ADHD to be a made up condition or the result of a lack of disapline etc etc etc. It is just so much shit!

My life is just constant chaos without medication. I can't put one thought before another it just all comes at once, it effects my work, my relationships, my social life, my education, how dare you trivialise it when it is a condition that has been recognised by health professionals for over 100 years now. It just used to known by other terms such as hyperkinesis or minimal brain dysfuntion. The Medical Community, Doctors, people with decades of education (against ur what?)have unequivically defined this as a real condition with a clear genetic link so much to the point that they perscribe highly restricted, addictive drugs to treat it BECAUSE IT MAKES SUCH A MAJOR DIFFERENCE IN THE SUFFERERS LIVES.

Do you even understand how stimulant drugs have a paradoxically calming and focusing effect on ADHD sufferers with hyperkenetic behaviours?

As simply as I can put it, put an adhd sufferer into a funtional MRI (look it up) and you will see compared to control groups that when presented with certain stimuli, areas of the control groups brain will light up while the person with ADHD will not. The fidgeting, unruleyness, impulsiveness, wreckless behaviour that is typical of people with ADHD is simply the patients way of activating these dorment areas of the brain to try and feel normal. Trying to get stimulation of some type to FEEL NORMAL!

Stimulant drugs provide this activation of otherwise dorment areas of the brain and hence all this behaviour stops.
Before you write any paper how about you try to educate urself a little on what experts know of the NEUROLOGICAL/BIOLOGICAL condition that is ADHD against what u think u know.

 

[monkeyjunky]

I'm sorry but you're just a bit rude and you sound more like you're trying to convince yourself rather than me. I acknowledge exceptions, if you'll care to peruse my post again you will see that. And its not casual observation, my cousin has severe adhd and is on ritalin and it has helped, but has made him quite unsociable and uninvolved, when it is quite obvious to everyone that it is his diet that is at fault. I also clearly acknowledged the existence of problems with kids, but questioned the diagnosis and the treatment

Ebola: i read that bit about noradrenaline somewhere, can't remember exactly where - it said something about ritalin mimicing part of the the neurotransmitters action; relating to it kind of filtering out noise (noise in the general sense)

 

[ebola?]

Since this debate is beginning to get nasty for no good reason, I'm going to give my two cents.

>>
Ebola: i read that bit about noradrenaline somewhere, can't remember exactly where - it said something about ritalin mimicing part of the the neurotransmitters action.>>

Well, my interest is definitely piqued, as this really flies in the face of what I know of noradrenal circuits in the brain.

>>
monkeyjunky you sound more like you're trying to convince yourself rather than me. I acknowledge exceptions, if you'll care to peruse my post again you will see that. And its not casual observation, my cousin has severe adhd and is on ritalin and it has helped, but has made him quite unsociable and uninvolved, when it is quite obvious to everyone that it is his diet that is at fault. I also clearly acknowledged the existence of problems with kids, but questioned the diagnosis and the treatment>>

This sounds like casual observation to me. If we bar casual observation from our conversations, though, we really won't have much to talk about.

>>And bleedingheartcommie, u should use google to look up "will to power" and "Nietzsche" and then maybe consider that since the world doesn't look likely to morph into some kind of socialist utopia in the near future that maybe giving these sufferers stimulant medications that let them funtion in THIS society outways the (alledged) health implications of medicinal doses of stimulant medications.>>

What does Nietzschian morality and metaphysics have to do with BHC's argument? Yes, he's a socialist, but he was not advocating socialist policies as the solution.

>>I am just so grossly offended by people who proclaim ADHD to be a made up condition or the result of a lack of disapline etc etc etc. It is just so much shit!>>

Read over the arguments again. This isn't really what people here are claiming.

>>
Do you even understand how stimulant drugs have a paradoxically calming and focusing effect on ADHD sufferers with hyperkenetic behaviours? >>

This effect is not unique to ADD/ADHD individuals though. Many people find a low dose of a proper stimulant calming and focusing (I would say that increased focus is one of the main cognitive components of the stimulants).

>>how dare you trivialise it when it is a condition that has been recognised by health professionals for over 100 years now. It just used to known by other terms such as hyperkinesis or minimal brain dysfuntion. The Medical Community, Doctors, people with decades of education (against ur what?)have unequivically defined this as a real condition with a clear genetic link so much to the point that they perscribe highly restricted, addictive drugs to treat it BECAUSE IT MAKES SUCH A MAJOR DIFFERENCE IN THE SUFFERERS LIVES.>>

Look. No one has said that ADD is a trivial disorder or that it does not exist. Rather, people have been saying that:
1. Perhaps stimulant medication is not an appropriate course of treatment for children.
2. ADD (like most any "disorder") is socially constructed, and ADD's social roots have been ignored by the medical community and pharmacuetical firms, who have a stake in engaging these disorders on strictly medical terms.

>>As simply as I can put it, put an adhd sufferer into a funtional MRI (look it up) and you will see compared to control groups that when presented with certain stimuli, areas of the control groups brain will light up while the person with ADHD will not. >>

This pattern of activation (the difference in activity in frontal cortical areas) is a central tendency of a group of ADD people compared to so-called "normals". Not everyone with or without ADD fits the pattern that is found to be typical. An fMRI test is far, far from reliable enough to serve as a diagnostic tool.

>>The fidgeting, unruleyness, impulsiveness, wreckless behaviour that is typical of people with ADHD is simply the patients way of activating these dorment areas of the brain to try and feel normal. Trying to get stimulation of some type to FEEL NORMAL!>>

Typical stimulants are a pharmacological shot-gun, having effects on the brain that are very general in scope. While they may improve functioning, they likely do not target abberant neurochemistry in a specific way, making ADD people "normal".

>>Before you write any paper how about you try to educate urself a little on what experts know of the NEUROLOGICAL/BIOLOGICAL condition that is ADHD against what u think u know.>>

ADD is clearly also socially constructed. I think BHC is onto something good.

okay...I'm tired of typing here. I'll be back with my own perspective later.

ebola

 

[monkeyjunky]

This sounds like casual observation to me. If we bar casual observation from our conversations, though, we really won't have much to talk about.

ha, too true. what else can we trust if not our own eyes
edit: good post by the way; i'd like to hear more about the noradrenal circuit, because i have seen it twice- once i read it, and i saw a doctor talking about it on a tv show about a kid with (violently)severe adhd. His course of treatment was diet and education based, and it worked better than the ritalin did on other kids.
did anyone else notice streetsurfers avatar, its awesome

 

[bleedingheartcommie]

i'm just throwing this out there..... but does anyone think that focussed meditation could cure add. I know it has greatly increases my ability to focus. I wunder id there are any studies on it and brain chemistry changes. just a side thought.

and in reguards to streetsurfer, you are the first person i have met that over generalized a theory or set of theories more than I. congratts ( this is more a joke about myself, not meant to offend. see any of my other posts for refference)

i realize that the thread might have seemed threatening, as if it was intended to take your meds away from you or atleast to devalue your need for it. And in thaT reguards i understand why you posted the way you did.

It is not my intent to take drugs away from people who really need them. I have a script for ritalin to treat my narcolepsy, and i know how in certain instances, as was with mine, a dug can rejuvinate and essentially fix a life that was once almost not worth living. If it were not for ritalin and ghb i would be sleeping 18 hours a day and collecting disability and being very depressed as that lifestyle constricts your social and emotional abilities. But, because of the drugs, I am at college, on my way to grad school, and living a most fulfilling life. So i agree that yes these drugs are of the greatest value in certain cases.

my argument was that by medicalizing the issue, people lose site of what is causing the problem, and are more concerned with the quick fix. The add/adhd phenomenon is an evolutionary explosion that should be studies out of shock of it's existence. And that isn't really happening b/c the med industry has laid complete clain to the problem. Instead the problem should be shared by doctors, sociologists, psychologists, behaviorists, and dare i say even religious leaders. I read one paper (very marxist) that noted the rise in the use of stimulants increased at the similar rate that the belief in religion declined.
there are many other social factors taht empower the medical industry in the add debate, if you'r interested i'll type them out, or maybe just post my paper in a week or two.


I'm not saying you don't need drugs, or rather that they arn't worth using. I'm not saing that it's your moms fault. I am saying that the incredible acceleration in the human mind, compared to the changing rate of the society has a bigger impact than has been noted. It's just almost impossible to research such a theory.

I do think that a smaller percent of kids realy need the drug that are currently on it. I would even say half.

so to clarify, I'm not attacking your or your use of your meds. I'm just trying to stress the importance of also studying the bigger picture.

and that 70% thing pissed me off too

 

[ebola?]

My perspective:

One of the projects in the psych lab in which I was working last year was an attempt to create a more reliable diagnostic tool for ADD/ADHD. We were doing this because currently no such reliable tool exists. The current practice is for a doctor (usually a general practitioner) to read a list of 9 symptoms from the DSM-IV, and if you report that you have 5 or more, you have ADD. This is clearly not sufficiently rigorous.

Our task was a basic visual attentional test on a computer where the subject would try to identify a target number surrounded by distracting characters. We observed that unmedicated subjects with ADD performed more poorly at this task than the general population (I should note that this task turned out to be too unreliable to use as a diagnostic tool).

When you think about things, though, the add subjects did not exhibit some "deficit" in abilities. Rather, what we observed was a difference in attentional styles (in my interpretation). So-called normal subjects had a more top-down attentional orientation, where they were able to focus on a particular location, disregarding other stimuli. So-called ADD subjects, however, had a bottom-up attentional style, where abruptly appearing stimuli would direct their attention towards them. We can see, clearly, that these different styles would be appropriate in different contexts.

So the question is, what IS ADD/ADHD? It is my opinion that ADD reflects natural variation in the distribution of attentional styles in the general population. That is, we label individuals who have extremely bottom-up attentional styles as "disordered" because they have trouble learning in our particular one size fits all educational system. Clearly, this is a socially constructed disorder. On the other hand, there are individuals who report sever disruption in organized thinking, which is ruining thier quality of life...but they don't really represent the majority of diagnoses.

ebola

 

[bleedingheartcommie]

^^ exactly my point.

the same thing happened with the medicalization of the term Learning Disorder.

sociologists argue that by turning this into a medical issue, we are forgetting the natural distrabution of learning ability. If we've learned anything from darwin (and i guess durkhiem, who is an idiot), it's that random mutation that create differing characteistics are what alows a species to survive. this deviation of characteristics from the norm usually happens in a consistent bell shaped curve no matter what the mutation is. the argument could be made that people with add represent this slice of the curve, while the rate of medication is three times that. (in the US anyway)


put very very simply. suppose and alien flew down from outter space and told everyone to look into a beem of light. the light then flashed and everyone died except the add kids who were twittling their thumbs. The people with add would ensure the survival of man kind. But what if all those kids were on ritalin. we'd all be dead. ADD might be the next stem in human evolution. (just a random side argument i thought i'd throw out there)

 

[ebola?]

>>sociologists argue that by turning this into a medical issue, we are forgetting the natural distrabution of learning ability.>>

Just wondering...which sociologists have focused on the medicalization of psychiatric disorder (ADD in particular)? I'm currently at Berkeley pretending to be a sociologist.

>>If we've learned anything from darwin (and i guess durkhiem, who is an idiot), it's that random mutation that create differing characteistics are what alows a species to survive. this deviation of characteristics from the norm usually happens in a consistent bell shaped curve no matter what the mutation is.>>

I'm not very partial to durkheim...but an idiot?
also, I'm wondering what his connection to this line of thought would be...

also, we can't really presuppose that mutation occurs along a bell curve, even if it often does, especially when we deal with psychometrics rather than genes themselves.

ebola

 

[bleedingheartcommie]

I call him an idiot b/c I am so pissed at the illogical direction that his papers sent sociology. Certainly smarter than me, but in a bad bad direction of assumed logic.

<<<also, we can't really presuppose that mutation occurs along a bell curve, even if it often does, especially when we deal with psychometrics rather than genes themselves.>>>

agreed, i just thought i'd throw it out there.

<<<Just wondering...which sociologists have focused on the medicalization of psychiatric disorder (ADD in particular)? I'm currently at Berkeley pretending to be a sociologist.>>>

riessman

Peter Conrad, "medicalization and social control"
i can email it to you in PDF if you want
he's written a bunch on the topic.

i think David Cohen a bit too



there are a bunch more, but you can find them through conrads sources.
they range from the medicalization of PMS to homosexuality to obesity ect.



also, i just read an article by Unnever, Cullen, and Pratt called ... parental management, adhd,and delinquent involvement.

really interesting... they found that though add increases the chances of delinquency, that the relationship is spurious to the factor of the individuals level of self control. I sorta botched the conclusion, but i'd reccomend you readd it aswell

-------
also in that article i read that studies show that the cause of add is 80% genetic. ebola, if you could explain to me how you can show a causal relationship through genetics i would aprechiate it. just wundering if we have that ability as of yet. I strongly susspect a corralation b/w genetic disposition and other factors.
for expl. people who live under power lines probably have poor genes and poor education programs. are we that advanced that we can show causal relationships along genetig lines? or is it all generalized coralation?

also i'd like to hear what you have to say on whether chemicals cause behavior or behavior cause brain chemistry? or what the general consensus is on that. i think i already posted my thoughts.

(sorry for all the longwinded posts, i'm not that articulate)

 

[JerseyGirl]

As for the 70 percent thing, it was just a number based on my observation of my friends. most of them will openly admit that they're no different off their meds than on them, that they don't really have ADD/ADHD, and they only take them because their parents tell them to. out of my group of friends I only know about five that actually have ADD/ADHD. The rest of them were all just typical hyperactive kids that came from eating too much sugar and not enough chance for exercise-of course a six year old that eats a bag of M&M's is going to be fidgety until that wears off.

I've had people try and tell me I have ADD/ADHD simply because I get bored easily-when I want to focus, I can, if it's something that I'm interested in, I can stay focused on it for five hours at a time. But I'm one of those people that's always tapping on something, twiriling pens, etc, just because I'm an over-typical type A who thrives off being stressed and tense and needing to tap and fidget. But I've looked at the symptoms, and then looked at myself, and I don't fit most of the symptoms, yet I've had doctors try to throw drugs at me (and I kinda regret it now too...)

The main problem isn't with the fact that ADD isn't a "real" disease or disorder-it is definitly real. the problem is with doctors who can't be bothered to look further into a case than what's on the surface. ADD has become socially acceptable, therefore doctors don't care when they diagnose it and write you out a script for whatever ADD drug they get a kickback from. They don't bother even to check if it's a diet thing (a friend of mine has a weird reaction to red dye in foods and whenever she has it she goes bouncing off the walls-docs wanted to give her ADD meds, until her mom realized what was making her crazy and once red dye was cut out of her diet, she was absolutely fine) and the docs not looking for underlying discipline problems.

If a kid's allowed to do whatever he wants at home, it very well may seem like he's got ADD at school-when in fact it's a problem at home. If the docs would look further into things, they'd notice it, but doctors are too lazy to give most people even a second glance. "You think Timmy has ADD? Timmy do you fidget?" "Yeah" "Do you have trouble paying attention in school?" "Yeah." *doc writes script for ritalin*

I have no problems with those that actually have ADD/ADHD-it is a recognized medical condition for a reason, and I think those that have it should have every right to proper treatment for it. Like I said, my problem is with doctors who throw pills at a problem because they're too lazy to look twice and only want their kickbacks.

 

[bleedingheartcommie]

However 70% of the people who are diagnosed with it don't have it.

that is a bold statement. bold enough to require academic proof. I'm not disagreeing with what you said. It's just that the way you said it implied proof (especially siting a specific percentage), of which you don't have. If you would have prefaced your opinion with "in my experiences, or i think that" or whatever, you wouldn't have been attacked the way you were.

is overmedication a huge problem? yes

has it been proven? no (or atleast ii have yet to find any source)

the reason for the lack of study might be the same for the over medicating


I think most of us here generally agree with you, it is just important to seperate generalizations, anecdotes, and proof when dealing with such serious accusations.

it wasn't what you said, but rather the mismatched tone of your statement

 

[kittyinthedark]

Having gone to a high school where every goddamn other person had a "disorder," I'm fully inclined to agree with the "medicalization" issue, along with the issue of profit motive for drug companies and doctors. Having struggled with bipolar disorder and PTSD for most of my life, it is searingly painful to listen to people complain about how they have depression and need medication and therapy when all they really need is a swift kick in the ass, some sunshine, and a bit more exercise.

I think an overwhelmingly large number of social ills, particularly in western society, could be dealt with by making some (eew, hate this phrase) paradigm shifts. Cut out the mass-media bullshit about looks and celebrity, focus on education as the most important part of growing up, etc. etc. etc. ....

 

[THeRaVeToY]

ah, but medication is easier than grand social change.

that being said, i think children are overmedicated because we're too afraid of being blamed that we screwed up our children, and because they didn't get the right medication/therapy/testing/gifted education/etc, they're going to end up in a therapists office, recounting thier failing and how it was the parent's fault. Or it'll be the reason they wet the bed as a child, completed the triad, and killed 26 women in the tri-state area.

medication is also easier than actually paying attention to our kids... latchkey kids used to be the exception, now it feels like they're the rule. Sitting down with your child and making them do thier homework? Nah, just put them on Ritalin and that life lesson/chance for bonding inconvenience will be solved by a little pill.


we're a "Super Size Me" nation, and our attitude here in the US is fast affecting (infecting?) the world. We want things faster, easier, cheaper, and bigger... our children are paying the price. We're taking a vaguely defined "disorder" (a word i HATE) and turning it into the scapegoat for the lack of discipline of like half a generation. We're too afraid to do the work, so we use a "shotun solution" in an attempt to escape blame for our own laziness.

(*disclaimer: it's nearly 4 AM, and this thread is one of my biggest pet peeves from a series of clinical/diagnostic/abnormal psych classes i've taken in the last few semesters. i'm ranting now, i'll probably come back and edit this later, so ebola!, can you save the eloquent ripping to shreds for once this is revised and coherent? thanks)

 

[streetsurfer]

Sorry I didn't mean to be personal, I just happened to stuble accross this thread on sunday afternoon when the last time I slept was friday night. Just reciently I had to listen to a couple of my workmates (nurses who should know better) talk about how ADD is clearly a disapline problem. I apologise for getting narked 8(

And thanx for the compliment on my avatar monkeyjunkey, I can't remember who I stole it from but it was on bluelight 8)

Ebola, I have to agree with everything you posted and just add in regards to ritalin mimicing part of the the neurotransmitters action, I recall reading recently that the brain grows specific ritalin receptors with long term useage so maybe the way it works on the brain changes over time?

Ok, to clarify, ADD is clearly a socially constucted disease u are correct, same as homosexuality was once thought to be, I guess when u break it down any mental abberation that is apparent to others or effects ones social funtioning could be called socially constucted no?

BHC, Coming from an extreame left viewpoint myself (scewed very reciently more to the right by Nietzschian morality and Adbusters Magazine hypocrasy) I would agree, phamacetical companys have alot to answer for when it comes to the medicalisation of lifestyle diseases, also in the the broading of the definition of these diseases to encumpus more people, hence more patient, more profits and with conditions like ADD/ADHD, it is only in the context of modern day civilisation and society that it becomes an evelutionary disadvantage.

Ritalin may be a shotgun, but it is one I am awefully glad to possess.

 

[ebola?]

>> I call him an idiot b/c I am so pissed at the illogical direction that his papers sent sociology. Certainly smarter than me, but in a bad bad direction of assumed logic.>>

And which direction is that? Are you talking about the hey-day of structural functionalism in the forties and fifties, or perhaps the work of talcot parsons?

>>i'd like to hear more about the noradrenal circuit, because i have seen it twice- once i read it, and i saw a doctor talking about it on a tv show about a kid with (violently)severe adhd. >>

It is associated with governing arousal and altertness, with wiring in limbic and frontal cortical areas. This sort of arousal is also associated with the formation of long-term memory. The thing is, noradrenal activity is associated with the "jitters" of stimulants rather than their focusing effect on attention. This issue is complicated by the fact that the majority of dopamine reuptake in frontal cortical areas occurs via noradrenal transporters.

>>also in that article i read that studies show that the cause of add is 80% genetic. ebola, if you could explain to me how you can show a causal relationship through genetics i would aprechiate it. just wundering if we have that ability as of yet. I strongly susspect a corralation b/w genetic disposition and other factors.>>

To my knowledge, we have yet to discover any single genes that are associated with any high-level, clearly operationalized cognitive attributes. We have discovered particular genes that are associated with, say, bipolar or schizophrenia, but these are usually later found to be reliable within a particular familial lineage and usually only explain a small proportion of the variance among individuals.

With studies involving adopted monozygotic twins, however, we can get greater leverage in arguing what proportion of variance can be explained via genetics. The primary limit to these types of claims, though, is that a quantitative statement of this sort is valid in the context of the other sources of variance in the population being sampled. For example, if I do study among rich parents in the united states and find that 80 percent of the variance can be accounted for by genetics, I would NOT expect 80 percent of that variance to be explained by genetics in a sample including both rich and poor parents.

>>also i'd like to hear what you have to say on whether chemicals cause behavior or behavior cause brain chemistry? or what the general consensus is on that. i think i already posted my thoughts. >>

this is a toughy...well, in terms of ontology? I think different levels of analysis should be regarded as different perspectives on a situation, neither one being entirely exhaustive nor entirely invalid. The metaphor we should use, perhaps, is the way in which elementary units of matter can be regarded as both waves and particles, depeding on the constraints imposed by the experimenter.

>>most of them will openly admit that they're no different off their meds than on them, that they don't really have ADD/ADHD, and they only take them because their parents tell them to. >>

I find this a bit odd. I rather clearly do not have ADD, yet I perform very differently when on stimulants.

>>ADD has become socially acceptable, therefore doctors don't care when they diagnose it and write you out a script for whatever ADD drug they get a kickback from. >>

Doctors are barred from getting direct kickbacks for prescribing particular things. It's okay (or legal, rather), however, for pharmacuetical firms to pay doctors (in gifts) to attend advertising seminars. :/

>>and the docs not looking for underlying discipline problems.

If a kid's allowed to do whatever he wants at home, it very well may seem like he's got ADD at school-when in fact it's a problem at home. If the docs would look further into things, they'd notice it, but doctors are too lazy to give most people even a second glance. "You think Timmy has ADD? Timmy do you fidget?" "Yeah" "Do you have trouble paying attention in school?" "Yeah." *doc writes script for ritalin*>>

It has not been established that parents have been getting more lax, or that this has anything to do with ADD.

>>Ebola, I have to agree with everything you posted and just add in regards to ritalin mimicing part of the the neurotransmitters action, I recall reading recently that the brain grows specific ritalin receptors with long term useage so maybe the way it works on the brain changes over time?>>

well, our brains have no ritalin receptors, but your neurons (some of them) will prune monoaminergic receptors in an attempt to reach homeostasis. This process is reversible.

One scary thing, though, is that some research suggests that juvinile treatment with stimulants causes increased dendric branching in cortical areas upon which these agents act. This could constitute damage, but we are currently entirely naive of the consequences.

ebola

 

[bleedingheartcommie]

well here is the 1st draft of this paper..

i still have to write the mothods section

i hope it can add to the discussion

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Abstract
This paper examines the medicalization of the ADD/ADHD phenomenon, and the consequences that this medicalization has created. It discusses the shift of social control from social to medical, and the negative impact that this shift is having on the current efficiency of treating ADD/ADHD.
Literary Review

The term medicalization describes a “process by which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems” (Conrad 1992:209). In regards to the ADD/ADHD phenomenon, the medical industry has successfully redefined what was once considered bad to what is now considered an illness. Other examples of social problems that have been medicalized are childbirth, PMS, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, alcoholism, and homosexuality, (though homosexuality was later demedicalized). After its medicalization, ADD/ADHD had become the most common behavioral disorder among children (Unnever, Cullen, and Pratt 2003:476).

Medicalizing issues such as hyperactivity or attention problems produces two major dangerous consequence that are critically reviewed through a social constructionism theory. The first consequence is that the context of the problem is lost, and because of this, the potential social causes of the problem are no longer considered or studied. In the case of ADD/ADHD, the attempts of recognizing and correcting the direct causes of the problem are replaced with simply treating the symptoms. While this offers some relief to the problem on an individual level, it in no way addresses the entire issue. The second major consequence is that the medical industry gains complete social control, which includes the ability to widen the definition of disorders, as well as to completely control the type of treatment. Because the problem of ADD/ADHD is now considered to be a mental illness, the treatment of stimulant medication alone has become a social norm (Conrad 1992:223). Because the problem has been medicalized, treating it with another method, such as behavior modification, are against the social norm and thus rarely done.

This norm of sole medical treatment is an extension of the medical industry’s acquired social control. The industry has essentially created a monopoly by manipulating social norms and definitions. Because of this construction, through medicalizing the problem, the voice of educators and parents is limited a great deal. Though many parents and educators have argued for alternative strategies, they mostly meet much resistance and failure (Malacrida 2001:162). Medicalizing the issue of ADD/ADHD has allowed the institutions of the medical profession to “wield maternal power in ways that mothers cannot” (Malacrida 2001:163).

Though the medical industry has defined the problem to be medical, and employs a medical treatment, the stimulants are not adequately fixing the problem (Malacrida 2001:154). In most cases, “after the medication has begun is often when the real school-parent conflict begins” (Malacrida 2001:154). This is because educators generally think that after the medication is prescribed, the problems should be fixed. When they are not, teachers tend to assume that the continuing behavior problems are simply a sign of stupidity (Malacrida 2001:155). This label can have adverse effects on the student’s future opportunities. The fact that the medication’s success rate isn’t considered adequate by educators and mothers suggests that there may be behavioral causes to the “illness” of ADD/ADHD.

While a few sources claim either genetics or learned behavior over the other, most agree that there is not sufficient evidence to declare whether the problem has social or medical origins (Horwitz, Videon, Schmitz, Davis 2003:111). Because of this consensus, it seems worth considering alternative and additional treatments for the ADD/ADHD phenomenon. After recognizing the social control that the medical industry uses to blur and prematurely define the problem of hyperactivity and attention inabilities, we can now rightfully step outside of the constructed normal treatment and try to improve the efficiency of ADD/ADHD treatments through nonmedical means. I believe that in addition to current use of stimulants, providing professional behavioral discipline to children with ADD/ADHD will prove to be a more efficient treatment.
methods....?