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Writer's pictureFred Guerin

The Myth of ADHD and the Medicalization of Childhood



The diagnostic criteria within the mental health bible, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM 5), are treated as absolutes based on thoroughly researched science. In fact, they are as much social-derived characterizations and, in many cases, completely arbitrary, made by people who have financial links to Big Pharma. Mental health is a booming billion-dollar business based on the idea of a ‘chemical imbalance’ biological model that can be ‘treated’ with medication. The fact is that except in rare cases, most of us are not born with bad brain chemistry. It’s true: some children ‘fidget’, ‘run about or climb’, ‘interrupt’, ‘don’t seem to listen’,’ do not pay attention to details, or are ‘easily distracted’, take what is deemed as unnecessary risks.


I was rather like this as a student in Grade school—I was considered by teachers in grade school to be restless and rambunctious…and sometimes a bit mischievous! So were most of my boyhood friends. We were not always obedient. We did not always quietly complete our arithmetic, writing, reading, or colouring assignments. For most boys of my age, it was a natural part of being a boy to be a bit rowdy, enjoy action-packed moments, and engage in horseplay. Often, we got scolded or called out by teachers. Sometimes we got away with it. But we were never considered mentally unstable, in need of medication, or diagnosed as attention-deficit-hyperactive owing to a brain chemical imbalance. Why?


Because 60 years ago teachers and parents knew it was common for children—and especially boys—to be restless, hyperactive, and distracted. Now the latter are diagnosed as having an ‘illness’—a disease that can only be controlled through drugs. As a diagnosed mental disorder ADHD is simplistic, reductionist, unscientific, illogical, and defies common sense. Simply put, THERE IS NO SUCH THING. There is no such ‘brain condition' that generates a disease called ADHD. None has ever been empirically demonstrated. Period.


Giving children Ritalin to control ADHD is not just a form of child abuse. It is a frank admission that we have completely failed as teachers and parents to deal with any child that does not fit nicely into our limited, controlling disciplinary understanding of ‘good behavior’. Dr. Robert Berezin, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for thirty years, sums it up very well:


“Some kids are active, some are quiet; some kids are dreamers, others are daring; some kids are dramatic, others are observers; some impulsive, others reserved; some leaders, others followers; some athletic, others thinkers. Where did we ever get the notion that kids should all be one way? Differences in temperament are only a problem if we assume that there is some ‘normal’ that all kids should conform to. If they’re active, give them amphetamines; if they’re moody, give them Prozac; for fears, give them benzodiazepines; and while we’re at it, let's give them antipsychotics, or Lithium and other mood stabilizing drugs. What in the world are we doing?”


The question is why have we designated some children as ‘bad machines’ in need of drug therapy? In part, it is because we live today in much more complex, stressful, expert-ridden, and fragmented societies. There are influencers, psychologists, specialists, experts, and pseudo-experts everywhere—they put forward unsupported opinions and give advice they are simply not qualified to give. Moreover, we tend to diagnose and treat problematic ‘individuals’ rather than the problematic social, economic, or cultural conditions we live under. Additionally, we are completely obsessed with the notion of winning and success—and success in a Western capitalist society is measured by whether a child conforms to established norms and expectations of competition in a world of scarcity and gig employment.


Now there is no doubt some children develop and mature sooner than others, but these developmental delays are not medical disorders. Such children do not require medical interventions but rather developmentally enriched curriculums that emphasize free play and programs oriented towards project-based and hands-on learning instead of one size fits all education and teaching to the test. But we simply don't invest in education anymore--we don’t see knowledge as an inherent good but merely as a means to the end of becoming a useful cog in modern society.


Over the past thirty years, we have created an environment for children where they spend seven-and-a-half hours a day consuming media—television, video games, the internet, social media, and so on. All of this passive, isolating, and introverted activity stimulates the production of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that is associated with novelty-seeking, rewards, and motivation). So, instead of exhausting themselves through physical activities in unstructured settings—playing outside, inventing games, exploring their surroundings, their brain is stimulated to the point of exhaustion through algorithms structured in such a way as to give them dopamine surges.


The problem is that children today who are diagnosed with ADHD are also the ones who are constantly in search of newer and more exciting experiences—and they hate to be bored! The fact is that the best scientists, inventors, philosophers, and artists are also restlessly and imaginatively searching for new possibilities, creative inventions, and ideas. Creative people like Nicholas Tesla, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein didn’t do well at school when they were children. Paul McCartney of the Beatles was said to be constantly daydreaming and not paying attention in class. None of them got good grades. But the latter individuals were not described as impulsive, but rather as spontaneous and gifted, as energetic rather than hyperactive, as boisterous rather than rash.


When these personality characteristics manifest in children we suppress them through pharmaceuticals. It goes without saying that if children are physically or mentally abused at home or if they don’t feel safe or loved because of constant parental conflict or financial stress then they are likely going to have trouble paying attention in school. Rather than deal with the social and economic conditions that give rise to these dysfunctions we are encouraged to ignore them and direct our attention instead to the individual--the child deemed ADHD. And what exactly are the symptoms of the latter? Well, they are things like fidgeting, talking excessively, avoidance, or dislike of tasks requiring sustained mental effort.


The reality is that some kids fidget because they crave physical activity; some talk a lot because they like to share their thinking and ideas with others; and some would rather engage in activities they find more interesting than what they are being taught by rote at school. I and many of my school chums were like this. We are now medical doctors, activists, scientists, union leaders, lawyers, engineers, artists and philosophers. We were not always compliant or conformist—and our society in those days did not diagnose us with a mental health condition and suppress our non-compliance with drugs.


Today there is an insidious medicalization of childhood--a tendency to regard life problems as due to medical ailments. This propensity results in a concomitant rise in the scope and reach of pharmaceutical companies that use doctors to promote their products. Drugs and drug companies, not doctors, define the disease. Medical doctors often spend as little as fifteen minutes diagnosing ADHD (often using a simple checklist of behaviors). They are often pressured by parents to have their kids diagnosed with ADHD simply to qualify for benefits such as extra time to complete standardized tests.


None of the above is to say that children do not suffer from sleep or sensory processing disorders, never experience depression or learning disabilities, or don't begin life with fetal alcohol syndrome or autism.


The problem is that the rush for a quick diagnosis of ADHD or depression and a quick drug fix of Ritalin or Prozac runs the risk of failing to recognize individual developmental problems in children and completely ignoring the socioeconomic factors that give rise to them. We need to deal with such issues not by resorting to pharmaceutical drug therapies or medicalizing childhood, but rather through a deeper understanding of childhood developmental differences an education system that grasps these latter and creates a curriculum more sensitive to differences rather than one obsessed with conformity and rigid teaching to the test.


Building such a curriculum requires much more robust and much higher-level teacher education, diverse classroom structures, higher-paid teachers, and high levels of funding in education overall. Unfortunately, corporate capitalist neoliberal and technologically driven societies see education as important only if it secures our present techno-driven world--anything else is just a burden on taxpayers. The very last thing they want is an energetic, civic-minded critical, and creative student body that might possibly develop into adults who threaten their present system of social, political, and economic dominance.


Better to medicate everyone into conformity—starting with the children.

 

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