Tag Archives: attention deficit disorder

The United States of Adderall

Since 1996 the annual amount of Ritalin type drugs approved for production by the DEA multiplied 4000 times to 50 million kilograms, and for Adderall 10000 times to 26 million kilograms. In more common terms, 83,776 tons of legal speed were approved for production in 2010 equaling more than half a pound for every man, woman and child in America.

The U.S. is a signatory to a 1972 United Nations treaty monitoring the production and sale of potentially addicting substances. The U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) based in Vienna, monitors the production of legal stimulants worldwide. INCB data shows that in 2009 the U.S., representing 4 percent of the world’s population, produced 88 percent of the world’s legal Ritalin type drugs. Canada uses a third per capita of prescription stimulants compared to the U.S. — Germany, one eighth, the U.K. one twelfth, Japan, one fiftieth.

New Study – 1 in 10 U.S. kids diagnosed with ADHD – Know Why? ADHD Drugs Are $4 Billion a Year Industry

A new study shows nearly 1 out of every 10 kids in the US is diagnosed with ADHD and there is speculation as to what’s behind the increase. OK. We’re going to make this real simple. The reason so many kids are labeled with ADHD is simple. ADHD drugging in the United States alone is a $4 billion dollar a year industry. Millions of kids are labeled “ADHD” despite the fact there are no lab tests, brain scans or chemical imbalance tests to prove there is anything medically wrong with these kids, yet they are placed on ADHD drugs that can cause drug dependence, mania, psychosis, hallucinations, heart attack, stroke and sudden death. Why? $4 billion a year, like we said.

ADHD drugs linked to heart disease and death

A major study recently published in the journal Pediatrics — and republished by countless other medical and mass media sources — made the bold claim that stimulant drugs like those used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children are not linked to cardiovascular events and death. But a recent analysis by Dr. Robert Tozzi writing for FOX News explains that the study was flawed, and that the drugs will cause cardiovascular events or death, especially in individuals with certain conditions.

Like most studies that allege the safety of pharmaceutical drugs, the Pediatrics study was at least partially, if not completely, funded by the drug industry. It was also deliberately constructed in such a way as to artificially minimize the risks associated with stimulant drugs. As a result, its findings ended up mirroring claims long made by the drug industry that stimulant drugs are safe, and that children do not need to be tested for certain conditions prior to being prescribed them.

DSM 5 Will Further Inflate The ADD Bubble

We are already in the midst of a false epidemic of ADD. Rates in kids that were 3-5% when DSM IV was published in 1994 have now jumped to 10%. In part this came from changes in DSM IV, but most of the inflation was caused by a marketing blitz to practitioners that accompanied new on-patent drugs amplified by new regulations that also allowed direct to consumer advertising to parents and teachers. In a sensible world, DSM 5 would now offer much tighter criteria for ADD and much clearer advice on the steps needed in its differential diagnosis. This would push back ,however feebly, against the skilled and well financed drug company sell. DSM 5 should work hard to improve its text, not play carelessly with the ADD criteria in a way that may unleash a whole set of dreadful unintended consequences- unneeded medication, stigma, lowered expectations, misallocation of resources, and contribution to the illegal secondary market peddling stimulants for recreation or performance enhancement.

The DSM 5 child and adolescent work group has perversely gone just the other way. It proposes to make an already far too easy diagnosis much looser.

Mainstream psychiatry is failing – but there is another way

I am sick of seeing friends who are seriously mentally distressed neglected and damaged by mainstream psychiatry. I am fed up hearing about people being detained, locked up and forced to take damaging medication before anyone has found out why they are distressed. I am angry about children being forced to take addictive psychoactive drugs by health professionals because no one could be bothered to work out why they are playing up. I met some others who wanted to change things and together we formed an organisation called Speak Out Against Psychiatry.