Author: John Ferry
Something strange has been happening to children in western society in the past couple of decades. The diagnosis of ADHD has reached epidemic proportions, particularly amongst boys in North America. National surveys conducted in 2003 and 2007 found that about 1.6 million cases of ADHD had been diagnosed in American elementary school children (about seven percent of 6-11 years old, and given that three to four times more boys diagnosis were around 11 percent of 6-11 years old boys). The diagnosis is usually made by a child psychiatrist or pediatrician with what the diagnoser considers to be over-activity, poor concentration and impulsively is suffering from a medical condition which needs treatment with medication. The main medications used for children with a diagnosis of ADHD are stimulants as Ritalin, whose chemical properties are virtually indistinguishable from the street drugs speed and cocaine. Boys are three to ten times more likely to receive the diagnosis and stimulants than girls with children as young as two being diagnosed and prescribed stimulants in increasing numbers. By 2005 over sic percent of school aged boys in America were taking stimulant medication with more recent surveys showing that in some schools in the United States over 17 percent of boys have the diagnosis and are taking stimulant medication. In the United Kingdom prescriptions for stimulants have increased from 6000 in the year 2002 to over 150,000 by 2005, over a quarter of million by 2007, with most recent figures showing that about 345,000 children in the United Kingdom are taking prescribed stimulants in the latter half of 2008 (about 2-2.5 percent of school children), suggesting that in the United Kingdom are rapidly catching up with the United States. Early in the twenty-first century in the West are living in the bizarre paradox of Western governments spending billions every year to fight a war on drugs with the right hand whilst the left hand hands out millions of prescriptions for cocaine-like stimulants to its children. Concerned professionals and parents are increasingly vocal in their criticism of the excessive use of stimulants. The multi-billion dollar psycho-stimulant industry has well and truly arrived in the United States and United Kingdom. And what the doctors in the both United States and United Kingdom doing about this? Falling wittingly or unwittingly into the arms of the drug companies to the point where the entanglement is so great that evidence-based practice is socially conditioned by the drug company’s profit motive. Of course, it is in the drug companies’ interests to highlight studies and conclusions that are likely to enhance their products sales. After all who knows how many negative trails whose results do not please the drug companies have been discarded by them. Where there is a conflict between giving accurate information and making sales it is not always the worthier motive that carries the day.
Tags:
|
Print this page
