Given the enormous potential for great harm, one has to wonder how the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, gets away with giving its stamp of approval on a new “brain wave test,” that allegedly will “help confirm an ADHD diagnosis,” when there is no scientific or medical proof that any physical abnormality exists.
Psychiatry is succeeding on a large scale in convincing people that there normal human feelings are wrong – disorders. When you feel down, especially for more than two weeks, you must have major depressive disorder. If you child is super active and creative, he must be ADHD.
More than a decade after a national scandal regarding the over-prescription of Ritalin and similar drugs to millions of American children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now reports a far higher rate of diagnosis than a decade ago.
An astounding 19 percent of high school-age boys – ages 14 to 17 – in the U.S. have been diagnosed with ADHD and about 10 percent are taking medication for it. Ten percent of high school-age girls have likewise been diagnosed.
Last week, The Post reported that more than 145,000 city children struggle with mental illness or other emotional problems. That estimate, courtesy of New York’s Health Department, equals an amazing 1 in 5 kids. Could that possibly be true?
Recently some of the nation’s top researchers, clinicians and scientists convened in Washington D.C. for the first annual Selling Sickness conference–examining how Pharma “sells” diseases to move the medications intended to treat them. Examples of Pharma’s disease-mongering business model abound, especially since direct-to-consumer advertising began in the late 1990’s.