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.

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.

Chris