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Loading...Nearly 1 in 10 Children Now Diagnosed With ADHD
- by Kristina Chew
- August 19, 2011
- 7:20 pm
As Nirvi Shah writes in On Special Education:
Children with ADHD have trouble paying attention, may sometimes act without thinking about what the result will be, and many are overly active, according to the CDC’s descriptions. At school, children with ADHD often have a plan that is similar to an Individualized Education Program for other students with disabilities, but is called a 504 plan. The causes and risk factors for ADHD are unknown, but genetic factors may play a role. Diagnosing ADHD involves a medical exam; a checklist for rating ADHD symptoms based on reports from parents, teachers, and sometimes the child; and an evaluation for coexisting conditions, according to the CDC.
There’s debate about whether or not individuals can “outgrow” ADHD. A recent Los Angeles Times article notes that only about 10 percent of adults with ADHD receive treatment, while a 2006 study in Psychological Medicine found that “about 65 percent of patients retain at least partial symptoms of the condition when they grow up.”
My husband Jim has really severe ADHD and would tell anyone in a second that he’s had it all his life, as did his late mother. Jim was pegged with having “minimal brain damage” by a school psychologist in high school after spending his childhood being reprimanded, and worse, for being excessively hyper, unable to pay attention or sit still, talking out of turn in school and more. In those days (the 1960s), such behaviors were met not with testing, services and compassion, but nuns (Jim attended Catholic school) taping his mouth shut, making him run around a parking lot (not a bad way to get him to use up all his energy, but the running was meant to be a punishment, not any sort of “strategy for managing ADHD” as one would say now) and making him stay after school to write the likes of “I will not misbehave in school” hundreds of times (and then telling him that he’d have to take his chances walking home, with a known pedophile in the area).
When Jim (he’s now a professor of cultural studies and religion in New York) visited a psychologist some years ago, he was told he definitely has ADHD. When he and I read any description of ADHD like the one above, we both say “yes, uh huh, yup” to every item. He’d be the first to tell you that ADHD makes it tough to get things done (though he’s written a couple of books); that it means he’s always paying attention to a conversation in the next room and his mind is usually about three ideas ahead of what is being talked about.
Perhaps some seem to “outgrow” ADHD because they learn coping mechanisms that mask the more obvious ADHD traits. Jim’s have been more than irksome for him throughout his life, yet have helped him in his academic work — he grasps scattered ideas and concepts and facts readily and can put them together into a big picture — and, most of all, in helping our 14-year-old son Charlie (there’s some evidence that ADHD and autism are linked). Jim has an intuitive feel for Charlie’s different neurological wiring and, too, the “neuro-fog” that leads to Charlie struggling to “process” language, events, feelings.
Most of all, Jim’s ability to have his attention all over the place has been crucial in teaching Charlie to do something that many kids like him really struggle to learn, riding a bike. Jim was confident and hopeful — and brazen — enough to bet Charlie could learn to ride a two-wheeler when he was 6 and took off the training wheels, while I stood wringing my hands on the sidewalk. Now they routinely bike 12, 16, 24 and more miles a day on local New Jersey streets and bike trails. Jim’s ability to focus on numerous phenomena at once have helped the two of them navigate yet another an “exciting” moment in New Jersey traffic with cars honking and signal lights changing from yellow to red.
Might it be the case that, just as nearly 1 in 10 US children has ADHD, so do 1 in 10 in adults?
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Read more: adhd, adhd adult, autism, cdc, hyper, kids health, learning disability, mental disorder, mental health, pediatrics, psychology
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74 comments
+ add your own"these “illnesses', ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, etc, are only alleged or imagined diseases" "Child psychiatry is not a legitimate medical science" Dr. John Breeding, Psychologist
"...(psychiatry's) wholly fraudulent claims that their diagnoses, such as ADHD, bipolar, OCD and depression are actual brain diseases when they are not." Dr. Fred Baughman, Pediatric Neurologist
“We are unaware that ADHD has been validated as a biological/organic syndrome or disease.” Gene R. Haislip, U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency
“The whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease,’ formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.”
— Dr. Thomas Dorman, M.D.
I feel ADHD is overly diagnosed and more than likely with better qualified doctors we would learn the child does not even have the syndrome. And all kids can, to some extent, be over-active. We just have slow, unqualified teachers making teaching sounds and also not qualified in this country for the most part; and Arizona has probably the worst teachers in the country
Children with ADHD can grow to be normal, productive citizens, as proved by this article. Most people have something to overcome in life. With all the new information on ADHD most of today's ADHD sufferers will have a good, productive life.
I would think that all the lead in our food and things made in China during the last two decades is contributing to this....:(
Thanks.
Parents and teachers should use every possible avenue before they resort to drugs which do nothing but mask symptons and often have disasterous long and short term side effects.
Physical activity, a more natural and healthful diet, avoiding allergens, arts and crafts, drama and music, family counseling, spending more time together out in nature, gardening, yoga. The list is only limited by the creativity and dedication of the caregivers.
If people stop looking for the "magic bullet" they may find that the process of working together is what is truely helpful for all concerned.
As a 61 yr old, I am sever ADHD have been all my life, It is not easy, I just started taking medication a year ago. It is the mildest med. as I can't take the other speed type medications
Great story about Mr. Newcomb, Mark.
Unfortunately, I think most teachers today would be unable to go for such a simple (completely logical and effective) solution. If the kid was running and fell or something happened, the teacher would be responsible and then there would be a call from the parents, a meeting with the principal, people getting sued, insurance, etc. It seems that teachers can no longer make such decisions without weighing out all of these things and then eventually deciding that it is just not worth it. Shame, really.
Any psychiatric diagnosis is a dandy excuse to get the victim of such diagnosis addicted to some product of a BIG DRUG company. A pity most such victims are at least as likely to either end up allergic to the drug or really miserable with some side effect that isn't obviously an allergy as they are to be actually helped by the drug.
Why I surely do not deny that ADHD exists.....I think we're too drug happy these days.
Even on T.V,you're told to ask your doctor about this medicine and that one.....never mind the side effects are worse than the ailment it is supposed to treat.Money,Money,Money and drug companies openly compete,even pay doctors kickbacks for prescribing a medication.
Take a pill,it'll cure whatever you got,what it might be,and whatever,you think it is!....
I say get 2-3 opinions atleast before you commit yourself or child to a drug....it's a big decision....one that could have consequences for life.
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