Author: John Ferry
The most commonly used medicine for naughty boys in Western culture is via the route of a diagnosis of ADHD, leading to a prescription of a psycho-stimulant such as Ritalin or Dexedrine. In addition to, psycho-stimulants, many other medicines are used in the Western Child-and-adolescent mental health world to try and control naughty children. The extent of medicalization of naughtiness becomes apparent when we consider that pediatricians hand out a large proportion if not most of the prescriptions that are handed out for the purpose of ‘treating’ naughty children. Within the medical profession ADHD is now viewed as and classified as a ‘neuro-developmental’ disorder. This means that ADHD is conceptualized as being due to a biological problem in the development of nervous system, despite the lack of medical evidence or tests to identify this supposed biological problem. Thus, by virtue of a trick of categorization, pediatricians and not psychiatrists have become a, if not the, professional group given the responsibility to diagnose and ‘treat’ ADHD (usually by prescribing medication). When leading medical journals publish articles purporting to represent an ‘evidence-based’ approach to managing children with behavior problems in which pediatricians argue that about seven percent of children, mainly boys, have ADHD for which the first line of treatment (and possibly the only treatment needed) is a psycho-stimulant, the depth of the problem of medicalization becomes apparent. As many pediatricians and child psychiatrists become comfortable with prescribing psychoactive drugs for naughty children, this having become an important component of their cultural belief system (at least in Western Culture), these professionals began to experiment with many other psychoactive drugs. Most of these experimental treatments are with drugs that have not been licensed for use with under-16s. In most Western countries pharmaceutical drugs have to go through certain trials and tests and following this obtain a license from which the governing authority feels the drug has shown acceptable standards of efficacy and safety. That doctors are allowed to prescribe out of license, however, does mean they are prescribing drugs in situations where safety standards, efficacy and side effects have not been tasted for and established, a fact not always explained to the recipient and their family. This has not stopped doctors from trying out every class of psychoactive drugs on children and adolescents, to the point where many of the drugs below commonly prescribed by many child psychiatrists and pediatricians for the ‘treatment’ of naughty children, often using several at once (called ‘polypharmacy’) and usually for many years.
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