America, Please Stop Drugging Your Children

slimvictor

slimvictor

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"Darkness cannot be dissipated with more darkness.


We are routinely drugging our children. Not because they have a proven illness, one that has been diagnosed by brain scans, blood tests or as a result of genetic screening. No, we drug our kids because their many varied personalities tick boxes on a checklist. A hugely generic checklist that covers a multitude of personality types, behaviours and skills. In some ways it is so generic that it is about as useful as a tabloid horoscope.

Not only that but many of the diagnoses that result from these checklists are simply wrong and the children are being medicated for no good reason.
This is more than a crisis; it is a national scandal.

As of today 20 million children are labelled as having mental disorders as a result of these checklists. They are then prescribed powerful, dangerous and potentially life-threatening drugs. In the USA, 20% of boys are ‘diagnosed’ with ADHD and will be offered a powerful drug, not unlike amphetamine, in order to ‘normalise’ that child.

Let’s be honest here, this is BIG business. Child drugging is a $4.8 billion-a-year industry and all this labelling is basically drugging kids for profit.

But just for a moment, let’s imagine if we could change the lexicon of these so called disorders, if we could look at things differently. Perhaps we could come up with something that looks like this:

Social Anxiety Disorder – Humanitarian
Oppositional Defiant Disorder – Leader
General Anxiety Disorder – Activist
Attention Deficit Disorder – Inventor
Attachment Disorder – Healer
Bipolar Disorder – Artist
Personality Disorder – Philosopher
Conduct Disorder – Revolutionary
…and many times for ADHD we can just say – Kid

You can add your own titles to the list; singer, dancer, doctor, scientist, etc, but above all let’s allow the children to choose what they want to be and please stop the psychiatric labelling of them.

cont at
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/nhe-america-please-stop-drugging-your-children/
 
I am interested to ask - do you think ADHD is simply not a disease?

I am not an expert, but I feel that they have pushed too far here.
I think that many ADHD diagnoses may be flawed or incorrect, but I would not say that all of them are incorrect.
Just because too many kids are given this diagnosis doesn't mean that none should be given it.
 
america, please stop making school so fucking boring, cut the bullshit fake history classes, stop wasting time with the national anthem etc and maybe these kids won't be jumping out their god damn skin cuz your schools are wack as hell.
 
Wow i totally agree with this one. When i was prescribed adderall in my early teens, i remember refusing to take it because my friends said i wasnt the same. Although i think a little bit more attention should be paid to the young childrens diet and lifestyle when looking at these problems. Now as an adult my partner and some of my coworkers are prescribed vyvanse and adderall and many of them say they dont even believe that adhd, the disease they they were diagnosed, even exists. Adults take these medications in a very different way and for different reasons then adolescents. Maybe its true that some children have an attention problem, but i know that there are so many that were misdiagnosed and prescribed vyvanse or ritalin, And it turns them into different people
 
treezy z said:
america, please stop making school so fucking boring, cut the bullshit fake history classes, stop wasting time with the national anthem etc and maybe these kids won't be jumping out their god damn skin cuz your schools are wack as hell.
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Hell yes to this.
But children being addicted to instant gratification and always having a screen to look at has something to do with this as well.
And diets high in sugar and refined carbs.
So, while schools play a HUGE role in this, parents play a big role too.
 
Yeah, I think they've gone too far here - downplaying and essentially denying the existence of a range of behavioural disorders and mental illnesses.
Having said that, yes - absolutely; poor diet, being raised on (or by) television and the lack of stimulation in classrooms (often a result of poorly funded education systems or rigid curriculum - i should point out that I am talking from a non-US context, though the themes and problems are consistent in many Western nations) that do not accomodate different learning needs - thus turning the kids who are disruptive or unable to engage with classes into a medical problem.

ADHD is probably overdiagnosed, but the pharmaceutical industry needs to sell stimulant medications somehow, right?
Without being too cynical - (uuh, who am I kidding?) I think the industry selling these drugs/pushing these diagnoses and prescriptions needs to be analysed as part of the bigger picture.
Having recently read a history of pharmaceutical amphetamine (On Speed: the Many Lives of Amphetamine by Nicolas Rasmussen), it is pretty clear that the medical profession has tried many different approaches to using amphetamine (and similar drugs) in a therapeutic context, leading up to the current situation where it is prescribed for childhood hyperactivity and attention disorders - which have led into being prescribed for adult attention disorders as well.

While I think diversity in children should be more accepted - especially in an education context - there is clearly something wrong with the way ADHD is diagnosed, managed and treated.
I was a better student in school when I was pepped up on dexies - but that's not to say I had a medical condition that required taking them. Seeing the long term effects of d-amp prescriptions on some of my friends makes me worry about the impact on all these people later in life though. Addiction issues (with amphetamine and other drugs) seems to be extremely common, at least in my observations of grown-up ADHD kids.
I think it is an issue that needs to be understood - and addressed - from a number of different angles.
 
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ADHD is most certainly over-diagnosed but claiming it flat out doesn't exist is simply not true. I had a friend who I later learned had been diagnosed with ADHD when I was about 10 and there was DEFINITELY a difference from him and his attention span and behavior than those of my other friends. Ultimately because of all of the ADHD symptoms, my patience with him quickly waned and it was a short-lived friendship.
 
If you want an ontological perspective, simply look at concepts like security, wealth, or other human constructs. Non-existant in reality, but clung to each and every day in our culture. I dont believe ADHD exists any more than ghosts or UFOs. To claim that a child has a mental disorder is honestly stupid if you ask me.
 
I believe it exists. That it is over-diagnosed is an understatement. I have the diagnosis myself (given to me as an adult) and both my sons were diagnosed with it as well. My issues with it are putting children on amphetamines at younger and younger ages and calling it a disorder or mental illness.

Here is what I know about how my brain works: I am consistently distracted, space out frequently, lose things all the time, make impulsive decisions, can't concentrate on the same task for very long unless it involves physically moving, have thoughts that constantly interrupt other thoughts. I've never considered it a disorder but I'm sure I would have had I been raised at a time in which this was the current thinking. I am forever grateful that I wasn't. Yes, it might have been nice to know that the reason I had to work twice as hard as my sister in school to get the same results was not because of my intellectual inferiority or that my impulsivity and risky behavior as a teen were not just bad decision-making and immaturity. But then again it is nice to never experience boredom, to have so many ideas that there are not enough hours in the day or days in a life. I don't see it as a disorder or a mental illness and I think calling a brain difference either of those things is not worth the trade-off in recognizing that a difference does in fact exist.

I work with kids at the elementary level and have done so for over 3 decades. There are definitely changes in attention spans across the board. The "medicating" is so out of control that it is a crime. Children as young as six are being put on amphetamines. Parents are listening to the "experts" and the experts, or doctors, are listening to the drug companies. These children do not see psychiatrists, they are prescribed these drugs from pediatricians.

Best advice if you have this kind of processing is to find work and play that fits your brain--it isn't necessarily the cookie cutter model but there are plenty of options out there. Conditioning a whole generation to think their brains on speed are normal is going to come back to haunt us as a society.
 
You can process reality in the way you're expected to process it, or you can take two minutes out of your day and think for yourself. I believe behavior and personality traits can be categorized on a spectrum. We live in a complicated world. You can support the dichotomy of schizophrenia, ADD, etc as much as you want, but I see nothing more than a glorified label meant to compartmentalize human beings.

I don't wish to discount any struggle or hardships a family or individual encounters as a result of mental disabilities. However, this pseudoscientific, multi-billion dollar industry hell-bent on exploiting the general population is, at the least aggravating, and pretty transparent if you look at from nearly any perspective.
 
^ I think that's a rather black and white perspective to look at it from.
Big Pharma can be accused - quite rightly - of many things; but I don't think "pseudo scientific" is really one of them.
The ethics may be questionable, the outcomes and the effects on people's lives. But we're not talking about homeopathy here.
 
spacejunk said:
^ I think that's a rather black and white perspective to look at it from.
Big Pharma can be accused - quite rightly - of many things; but I don't think "pseudo scientific" is really one of them.
The ethics may be questionable, the outcomes and the effects on people's lives. But we're not talking about homeopathy here.
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Indeed it is! The number of people who have be deinstitutionalized with the invention of antipsychotics in the 1960s and 70s was astounding. She most certainly had schizophrenia and maybe other things, and all the symptoms that come with it, delusions, angry outbursts. The problem is without this dichotomy, then you have no room to understand the nuances of these people's illnesses. But from the perspective that the pharmaceutical industry is pseudo-scientific, and does no good for people, I guess that wouldn't really matter. If there's no real illness, there's no need for medicine, eh?
 
I've been beating this drum for a while. Doctors in America have become shills for the pharm industry, lavished with vacations masquerading as professional seminars and other kickbacks for their acquiescence and cooperation. I feel disgusted when people talk about what their GP told them to do, taking as gospel their advice on diet and drugs, as if though the family doctor had suddenly become qualified as a dietician and pharmacist. Where do you think the docs learn about the drugs they're prescribing? From the motherfuckers manufacturing them!
 
Part 1: I detest the pharm industry for many, many reasons. Mostly for the fact that profits come before lives for them. But they still do help improve and save lives. So a nuanced view is necessary. This theme will continue below, in part 2.

Part 2: Compartmentalizing humans is the job of all bureaucracy.
You need a shorthand way of representing a human.
Names are the first and easiest way most of us have. For several of me friends to say "Hey, Victor is coming over later" among themselves lets them know that the party is going to begin =D
No, but srsly, it refers to me, all summed up in a name.
Gender, race, etc. are all used in this way, mostly by people who don't know me as well. ("Look at that man over there" etc.)
Some use a social security number to represent me.

To treat all people with the label "schizophrenic" as identical is stupid and wrong.
But to ignore that there is such a generalization to be made is hiding one's head in the sand.
A balance between the two is necessary, in order to gain the wisdom from the label without committing one's beliefs to it entirely.
It depends entirely on one's beliefs, purposes, and maybe current mood.
If someone screams that a hungry lion is approaching, you would not stop running to point out that it was actually a tiger.
We need to be able to use labels conscientiously, and remember not to believe in them.
That is why I appreciate these kinds of discussions...
<3
 
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There are natural, alternative, and / or complementary treatments for many of the disorders and diseases mentioned. Try Googling them, like: "psychosis; niacin; Hoffer", and enter "ADD + ADHD diet" in the searchbars at the sites of Amazon or BarnesAndNoble, and I have complied a list of natural, alternative, and / or complementary treatments over the years, so feel free to message me, if interested in anything specifically, and I'll send, or direct you to those resources.
 
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