Death bed confession: ADD/ADHD is a hoax.

reply to post by dlbott


Why so snarky? Of course I read the OP. It was my point, in fact. People in positions of authority with no medical training trying to make a medical diagnosis in order to medicate my child to control his behavior. Even with a deathbed confession that the medical diagnosis is "all made up" doesn't negate the fact that it was at the time (and still is) considered a valid medical diagnosis, treatable with medication.

reply to post by whitewave


Whitewave,

I think you are spot on, and interesting to add that other
'modern' so called 'disorders' have ties to the mental health
industry, which has roots going all of the way back to The Tavistock
Institute, and Freud; their special agent.

reply to post by gladtobehere


ew I posted a really good you-tube about this a long time ago, wish I could find it, it dealt with how psychiatry teamed with the government was purposely screwing with our minds,

reply to post by burntheships


Man, the Tavistock Institute must have some pull considering they didn't exist until 1946 and Freud died in 1939.

reply to post by Xcalibur254


Change the word agent to prophet then, suit your taste.
Either way, it is true.

Tavistock existed in ideals, spirit, and persons before it was "founded".

reply to post by gladtobehere



Interesting to note also Leon Eisenberg had works published by Tavistock/Ruteledge

Eisenberg L. The Science of Epidemiology: Empirical Data Gathering, Public Health Action,
or Both? In Cooper, B. Eastwood, R.(Eds.): Primary Health Care and Psychiatric
Epidemiology. London, Tavistock/Routledge, 1992:3-13

srcd.org eisenberg pdf
isbndb.com...

Yep, what a shocker, ADD is a bunch of bologna they (its always they!) use to push drugs. If you think ADD is a crock, you should check out ODD! Oppositional Defiant Disorder is starting to be used more and more. I never even heard of it until a few months ago, but they're labeling kids in schools with it now just like they do ADD. I think most of us here probably got ODD.

reply to post by Bundy


ODD is nothing like what ATS portrays it as. In ATS land ODD is a label applied to anyone who bucks the status quo. In real life it is the same thing as antisocial personality disorder (aka psychopathy). Professionals just don't want to label children with such a damning diagnosis. So are you saying that everyone on ATS is a psychopath?

What? A whipped up non standard "condition" used to push over-priced drugs for our precious children (and pets)?

There is no standard of human behavior... while the human is still alive, that is (and maybe in death, too, dunno). In my mind that is what separates us from (many) animals. Arbitrary labels used to identify non normative ideas and behavior is a scam of some sort.

But in the DSM's defense, some people ARE less annoying when drugged to near death.

reply to post by whitewave


Show me a five year old, especially a boy who can concentrate/keep their attention on something that they're not keenly interested in for more than a minute or two and I will call you a liar. LOL.

Another point not mentioned is SUGAR!!

Ask a parent of traditionally fed kids-those that allow a dessert but after a full and proper meal- who give their kids, say, ice cream before bed!! They'll tell you what you'll get a kid wired to the nines...every symptom described in attention disorder disabilities!

With kids that already have a large sugar intake, more sugar can have a reverse affect, listlessness, lethargy, even semi-unconsciousness mistaken for tiredness. The exact effect Ridalin has on a kid. A category two,(addictive) amphetamine-SPEED-. It speeds the kids up so much, that it reverses and slows them down. Far more unattentive, less capable of absorbing information in the classroom...all to make it easier for the "teacher" to cope.

Yet, I've seen a school dept. threaten a parent with child endangerment if they refused to give their kid the ridalin.

This comes down to parenting, discipline, diet ,and, undercutting that is taking sufficient responsibility for their kids to research and address these issues themselves.

Some parents use these "treatments" on their kids with the same motivation as the teachers, I.E. to make it easier for them as parents!

We are rapidly becoming a two level society. One that accepts what they are told by the experts, politicians, etc. that end up the minions to those that "advise" them.

The rest that take a bit more responsibility for our families, our gov't and our society.

Politically, it's not hard to figure out which camp each falls into......

reply to post by nwtrucker


Ritalin isn't an amphetamine. It's methylphenidate. The truth is, and this is backed up by studies, people who legitimately suffer from ADHD have portions of their brain that aren't as active as they should be in comparison to other areas. What these drugs do is stimulate these areas. If you give someone who doesn't suffer from ADHD (including those who have been misdiagnosed) these drugs the results will be different than if you give them to someone who legitimately suffers from ADHD.

Of course your theory also fails to explain why Strattera (an NRI and non-controlled substance) also works as a treatment for ADHD.

can't forget the introduction of Aspartame to be sure we all went "sugar free"!

Xcalibur254
The truth is, and this is backed up by studies, people who legitimately suffer from ADHD have portions of their brain that aren't as active as they should be in comparison to other areas.

But, who is to say that this is 'abnormal' in way that needs treatment with
psychotropic drugs?

Sure, short term treatment is all we ever hear about as the positive,
what we rarely hear about is how on the long term scale these
drugs do not help, in fact they have serious side effects.

What gets publicized are short-term results and studies on brain differences among children. Indeed, there are a number of incontrovertible facts that seem at first glance to support medication. It is because of this partial foundation in reality that the problem with the current approach to treating children has been so difficult to see.

Back in the 1960s I, like most psychologists, believed that children with difficulty concentrating were suffering from a brain problem of genetic or otherwise inborn origin. Just as Type I diabetics need insulin to correct problems with their inborn biochemistry, these children were believed to require attention-deficit drugs to correct theirs. It turns out, however, that there is little to no evidence to support this theory.

In 1973, I reviewed the literature on drug treatment of children for The New England Journal of Medicine. Dozens of well-controlled studies showed that these drugs immediately improved children’s performance on repetitive tasks requiring concentration and diligence. I had conducted one of these studies myself. Teachers and parents also reported improved behavior in almost every short-term study. This spurred an increase in drug treatment and led many to conclude that the “brain deficit” hypothesis had been confirmed.

But questions continued to be raised, especially concerning the drugs’ mechanism of action and the durability of effects. Ritalin and Adderall, a combination of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, are stimulants. So why do they appear to calm children down? Some experts argued that because the brains of children with attention problems were different, the drugs had a mysterious paradoxical effect on them.

However, there really was no paradox. Versions of these drugs had been given to World War II radar operators to help them stay awake and focus on boring, repetitive tasks. And when we reviewed the literature on attention-deficit drugs again in 1990 we found that all children, whether they had attention problems or not, responded to stimulant drugs the same way. Moreover, while the drugs helped children settle down in class, they actually increased activity in the playground. Stimulants generally have the same effects for all children and adults. They enhance the ability to concentrate, especially on tasks that are not inherently interesting or when one is fatigued or bored, but they don’t improve broader learning abilities.

www.nytimes.com...

While conditions like ADHD may exist in some form or manner, the very act of labeling any condition and then putting it into the media automatically means there will be a large portion of people diagnosed with this who don't really have it, not to mention the fact that trying to categorize any mental problems is shaky ground to begin with.

And in this increasingly hypersensitive world, what constitutes a diagnosis becomes increasingly inclusive. Example: rape in some circles is considered someone simply showing you their genitals. Tell that to someone who was sexually assaulted and beat to within an inch of their life.

My niece went on ritalin, and 10 years later, has permanent problems apparently attributed to it. I do put a lot of the responsibility on her parents though. I mean just because a kid is causing a lot of problems and is very hyper, does not mean they have to be medicated. Yes, there are extreme cases of anything, but again, what constitutes problematic has become increasingly inclusive.

reply to post by gladtobehere


A good part of this is due to many parents wanting their kid to be diagnosed as having it. There's money involved for them each month, plus child services that are paid for by the taxpayer. My ex-wife is in this field. She works with these children every day. Some are obviously severely in need while many are the product of drug addicts and alcohol abusers. She's been caring for one child in particular, for 12 years. The kid is now 18 and my ex will be her guardian for life. The parents get $600/mo plus tons of child services to the point they really never have to do much for the kid. As a matter of fact I'm waiting on my ex now. She'll be dropping that kid off in about an hour. She has her 6 days a week after school, until 9pm.

havok
Funny how for every mental "disease" a human can get...there is a pill for.

Ready for a surprise? Ready? You sure? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Invent a medication with no purpose and create a disease.

reply to post by WeAreAWAKE


The disease. The first mental disorder to be effectively treated with a medication was schizophrenia. The drug, Thorazine, was first produced on December 11, 1950. Prior to this schizophrenia was "treated" through hospitalization and ECT.

rickymouse
Tobacco can be used to treat ADHD and ADD. So can coffee and a hotdog twice a week. There are many ways to address this issue, none of them requiring medications. You can speed up a part of the brain or lower the output of the other, both will work. Food, beverages, and condiments can accomplish that. A slight restructuring of the diet can help. Bloodtests will not work right, it is sometimes a deficiency at the cellular level or an imbalance of electrolytes or brain chemicals. This can be accomplished with diet.

And having the kid going outside and running around would also raise their blood pressure.

Conclusion: sitting on a chair in a classroom with boring lessons for eight hours a day is going to cause brain damage. No different from those old peoples homes where they just spend their days dozing and nights sleeping because there is nothing to stimulate them.

reply to post by gladtobehere


I've always contended that ADD/ADHD was just a hoax to sell pharmaceuticals. Has anyone ever noticed that these "conditions" never existed until they did away with corporal punishment in public schools? I certainly noticed. All that was required when I was in school was a little judicious use of the "board of education" that was sitting in the Principal's office. Now we've got all these manzy-panzy mamby-pamby "parents" that won't discipline their kids and won't allow the schools to discipline them either. This has resulted in "the spoiled rotten little kids that have reached voting age and expect everything to be handed to them without having to work for it" generation ... the obama lovers.

The problem is not ADD/ADHD, but our society that is more and more focused on career.
The children are just put in front of a computer/console or a TV.
When I was a kid, I had problems to concentrate in school, my parents were told to give me some pills.
After one day, my mother said "he is so silent, this is not my son" and never gave me the pills again.
I was an active kid, playing outside with my friends, getting hom dirty... etc etc.
Now if a kid is active and the parents actually have to care about that kid, they seem to jump on the ADD/ADHD wagon and just believe their kids are sick.
NO! This is how children normally behave, they are curious and active. If you are not able to handle that, better dont get kids