Stim Nation: If Ritalin Is Safe, Why Not Give It To All Kids?
On Neuromarketing they are discussing how Ritalin is being abused, an issue Myomancy has covered before here, here and here. The article prompted me, in the spirit of Swift’s Modest Proposal, to wonder why not give all kids Ritalin?
Ritalin has been proven to improve concentration, academic performance and behaviour. It is, if you believe the drug companies, perfectly safe to be taken for months or indeed years. However we only prescribe it to children who have been diagnosed with ADHD. This is an arbitrary distinction. There are plenty of children who misbehave, have problems concentrating or generally poor academic performance who can be helped. As it is normally white, middle class kids who get diagnosed and poor black or hispanics who don’t, this is an issue of social equality.
Imagine a classroom full of calm, attentive children. Children of every race, creed and ability, equally engaged and receptive to the wise teacher’s words. Imagine the orderly queue as the children line up for their lunch time dosage. Only those poor children whose parents hold outdated, illogical views on medical safety and the sanctity of a child’s body are excused. These unlucky children are socially isolated by their strange, non-conformist behaviour.
The benefits of this policy do not stop in our schools. Why take chances with workers in nuclear power plants and other high risk occupations. Should we not expect the highest level concentration from these workers? Their lack of medication is a health and safetly issues that affects us all.
In this brave new world, cocaine addiction will be a thing of past. Why take illegal drugs when snorting the readily available, cheap and safe Methylphenidate is just as good.
Write to your MP, write to your senator, demand to know what they are doing about getting free drugs to every child in this country. Contact the big drug companies and ask them to speak at your school on the benefits of mass prescription. Acting together parents, drug companies and large payoffs to politicians can change our schools into the calm, centres of learning we wall want them to be.
Find Out More:
Books:
- Nature’s Ritalin for the Marathon Mind: Nurturing Your ADHD Child With Exercise
- Ritalin Is Not The Answer: A Drug-Free, Practical Program for Children Diagnosed with ADD or ADHD
- Ritalin-Free Kids: Safe and Effective Homeopathic Medicine for ADHD and Other Behavioral and Learning Problems
- Ritalin is Not the Answer Action Guide: An Interactive Companion to the Bestselling Drug-Free ADD/ADHD Parenting Program
- Concerta Side Effects
June 7th, 2006
ADD / ADHD, ADD / ADHD Medication
Comments on: Stim Nation: If Ritalin Is Safe, Why Not Give It To All Kids?
In the same spirit:
In Ontario, they are already working on it! Schools can recommend pharmaceutical treatment, even to the point of excluding the child until a prescription for Ritalin has been obtained. Often the drug is administered (or rather, the pill-taking is supervised, to avoid law suits) at school, to ensure it has been taken. the applications are only just being explored. At this point, a nominal diagnosis of an attention disorder is still needed, but medication is proving a simple answer to potentially messy problems like child abuse and emotional trauma.
Posted by: ML Mountjoy June 8th, 2006 at 10:35 am
ML
Have you got any further information on the Ontario policy? It would be an interesting thing to cover on Moymancy.
Chris
Posted by: Chris Tregenza June 8th, 2006 at 11:31 am
I don’t actually know what the official policy is. It may in fact be quite reasonable. My objection is only to the way in which I have seen treatment with stimulant (and, increasingly, anti-depressant) medication applied to children.
Schools may or may not have the power to demand a diagnosis and prescription. The present situation might be simply a case of doctors relying heavily on the recommendations of teachers, who have been given too loose an outline of ’symptoms’ to watch for.
At any rate, I’m afraid I can give little useful information on the subject, apart from a disturbing number of first-hand accounts of inappropriate and detrimental use of Ritalin. Perhaps I ought not to make such accusatory remarks with such a lack of background information, in which case I apologize.
Posted by: ML Mountjoy June 10th, 2006 at 11:41 am
Because once all kids are calm with Ritalin- the school work will be made harder so that here we go again- some kids will always be better than others and be graded on a scale. Otherwise who needs teachers if not to give out grades and determine who makes it to graduate school or not.
Article about what ADD really is.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_jasonmar_060608_new_concept_in_testi.htm
Posted by: jason alster MSc June 11th, 2006 at 10:08 am
I think “abusing” is a loaded term, since society hasn’t really decided how we should think about using drugs for cognitive enhancement. If a drug reversed the symptoms of Alzheimers, few people would object to its use. But what if a drug helped the “normal” cognitive deterioration that occurs with aging (e.g., less efficient memory)? Is that cognitive enhancement, or treating a disease condition? (For example, we don’t tell seniors that osteoporosis is normal.) What is “normal”, and should we accept a decline in our faculties because there have been no options in the past? To take it a step further, if a college student can enhance her learning and test-taking ability by taking a relatively safe pill, should that be discouraged? If middle-class and wealthy students have access to cognitive enhancers, should the government provide them to low income students? These are the kind of questions that we’ll have to wrestle with in the coming years.
Posted by: NeuroGuy June 22nd, 2006 at 6:11 pm
I hate to comment on an old post like this, but there is one major fallacy here that ought to be addressed:
There would be a major moral quandary here IF these medications had the same effects on non-ADHD kids as they do on children with ADHD. Perhaps the problem here is that we’re using the trade names for these drugs, and the only time that we refer to them by those names is when they are given to ADHD persons. This is why so many people apparently believe that methylphenidate (Ritalin) will have a calming effect on all kids.
Leaving aside the new drug Strattera, ADhD medications are stimulants. Amphetamines were the first ones discovered to be effective back in the 1930s. Methylphenidate, which is more similar to cocaine in pharmacodynamics but shares similar pharmacokinetic properties with the amphetamines, was first used in the 1950s.
In the intervening years, if these drugs would make an entire classroom sit still and pay attention, don’t you think someone would have thought of that and tried it by now? If not in the US, why wouldn’t the Soviets have tried something like that in their push to outdo the US in science and technology?
Because it won’t work. Don’t believe me? Take a normal classroom with mostly non-ADHD kids. Give them all amphetamines and see what happens. Oh, the ADHD kids will be sitting still, paying attention, but the other kids will be bouncing off the walls or else being overly aggressive and getting in fights.
People with ADHD have a neurological makeup that is different, not better or worse or faster or slower or smarter or dumber, just different from the rest of the population. Giving everyone else our drugs won’t do for them what they do for us and vice-versa.
It’s the same reason why giving anti-psychotics to someone in the midst of psychosis will give you a calm, normal individual, but giving them to a normal individual will give you a drooling, shuffling, semi-brain-dead zombie. Or for that matter, why cholinesterase inhibitors will help someone with Alzheimer’s, but aren’t bloody likely to help you remember where you put your car keys. They’re already in use, but you don’t see people abusing them for academic or corporate advantage, and that’s why.
Oh, and incidentally, the evidence I’ve seen is that tbe percentage of children prescribed ADHD medications is actually below the generally accepted prevalency levels in the general population.
Posted by: Hyperion September 30th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Putting kids on ritalin is like putting them on the wagon.
Once a child is on this drug he or she can develope a dependancy on it. Did you know that schools receive financial benefits for every child labelled with a mental incapability as they put it. Above something was mentioned about how schools are showing their concern and insisting on individual children to take this drug. Why shouldn’t they if in some way it benefits them and all they lose is a child’s health.
If you can tolerate giving your child a drug that is not just by-chance called kiddy-cocaine then go ahead! However the risks that tag along with this drug are numerous, the effects can be permanent and the price for decent grades is a child with physical and emotional unstability.
My child has been diagnosed with ADHD when he was 8 and I never gave him the drug. He goes to therapy sessions and behavioral management sessions. He might be more active, working on his attention span and he recalls thing with more difficulty than we, but at least he is not medicated.
The marketing industry also benefits immensely with the fairly wide distribution of this drug. It is becomming more acceptable for young children to be dependant on drugs.
This change of attitude, this drug epidemic and this revolutionary drug will be where it all begins.
Posted by: Fatima Mohammed June 17th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
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